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JOHN    THE    SCOT 


HORACE   HART,    PRINTER  TO  THE   UNIVERSITY 


STUDIES 

IN 

JOHN  THE  SCOT 

(ERIGENA) 

A  PHILOSOPHER  OF  THE  DARK  AGES 


ALICE   GARDNER 

LECTURER  AND  ASSOCIATE  OF  NEWNHAM  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE 
AUTHOR  OF  'JULIAN  THE  PHILOSOPHER,'  'SYNESIUS  OF  CYRENE,'  ETC. 


'  Lux  in  tenebris  lucet,  et  tenebrae  earn  non  comprehenderunt' 


HENRY   FROWDE 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY   PRESS  WAREHOUSE,  AMEN   CORNER,   E.G. 


:  :  :.  :  :?JEJV  YCUR^*:*  9*'&  A,;FH»TH'  AVENUE:  ;  •'• 

••••*•••  *••       '  *••         *******       •••••• 

•     »••••••  .   •     •  _«****        **         ••*****'        •** 

•  ••••••••••        1*00  ..... 


TO 

L.  A.  H. 


'  HOC  OPUS  .  .  .  TIBI  ...  IN  STUDIIS  SAPIENTIAE 
COOPERATORI  .  .  .  OFFERO  ET  COMMITTO.  NAM  ET 
TUIS  EXHORTATIONIBUS  EST  INCHOATUM,  TUAQUE 
SOLERTIA,  QUOQUO  MODO  SIT,  AD  FINEM  USQUE 
PERDUCTUM.' 

JOHN  THE  SCOT  TO  BISHOP  WULFAD 

(De  Divisione  Naturae  v.  40). 


Stack 
Annex 


8 


PREFACE 


MY  apology  in  publishing  these   little    studies 

of  a  mediaeval  and  apparently  remote  philosopher 

may  be  given  in  a  few  words.     Since  I  began  to 

.     work  at  this  subject  I  have  been  repeatedly  struck 

UJ 

Hi  by  the  want  of  familiarity  on  the  part  of  the  read- 
i  ing  public  with  the  very  name  of  John  the  Scot, 

o  whom  many  educated  people  still  confuse  with 
}  his  namesake  Duns  of  unhappy  reputation.  At 
the  same  time  I  have  noticed  how  all  students 
of  philosophy,  who  have  made  even  a  slight  ac- 
quaintance with  him,  have  felt  the  impression  of 
a  deep  thinker  and  an  original  character.  And 
some  indications  (notably  the  interest  excited  in 
the  Bampton  Lectures  for  last  year  on  '  Christian 
Mysticism ')  have  led  me  to  think  that  a  good 
many  English  people  feel,  at  the  present  moment, 

437401 


vi  Preface 

strongly  drawn  towards  those  developments  of 
religious  thought  of  which,  in  Western  Europe, 
my  philosopher  is  one  of  the  earliest  exponents, 
and  that  if  only  they  obtained  some  insight  into 
his  mind  and  feelings,  they  would  hail  him  as 
a  fellow  searcher  after  truth,  rather  than  pass 
him  by  as  a  musty  schoolman. 

I  probably  do  not  stand  alone  in  having  been 
first  attracted  to  the  person  and  attitude  of 
Scotus  by  the  charming  sketch  given  in  Guizot's 
Civilisation  en  France.  The  more  thorough  works 
on  his  philosophy,  chiefly  in  German,  are  men- 
tioned in  my  footnotes.  The  edition  of  Scotus 
to  which  I  refer  is  that  of  Floss  in  the  Patrologia 
of  Migne. 

This  work  does  not  purport  to  be  a  complete 
account  of  the  Scottian  philosophy.  Some  im- 
portant branches  have  been  but  incidentally 
touched  upon,  or  perhaps  omitted  altogether.  My 
object  has  been  to  represent  as  widely  as  I  could 
some  aspects  of  that  philosophy  in  relation 
to  the  thought  of  those  times  —  aspects  which 
had  struck  me  as  peculiarly  interesting,  and  which 
therefore  seemed  to  me  likely  to  interest  others. 


Preface  vii 

At  the  same  time  I  hope  that  I  have  pointed  out 
the  chief  authorities  and  guides  necessary  for  any 
students  who  desire  to  give  their  attention  to 
other  topics  than  those  herein  treated. 

In  the  course  of  my  work  I  have  met  with 
much  encouragement  and  many  helpful  suggestions 
from  colleagues  and  friends.  From  my  brother, 
Professor  Percy  Gardner,  I  have  received  help  in 
the  correction  of  the  proofs.  As,  however,  most 
of  the  assistance  I  have  received  has  been  of  a 
general  and  informal  character,  my  thanks  must 
also  be  expressed  generally,  though  not  wanting 
in  sincerity. 

If  I  have  seemed,  in  the  eyes  of  experts  in 
philosophy  and  theology,  to  trespass  on  wide  and 
dangerous  fields,  I  may  plead  in  excuse  that  to 
a  certain  extent  every  conscious  thinker,  how- 
ever slight  his  powers  and  however  imperfect  his 
training,  must  be,  in  a  sense,  both  philosopher 
and  theologian.  And  I  may  add  that  an  amateur 
may  be  pardoned  for  trying  a  piece  of  work  which, 
in  this  country  at  least,  has  not  already  been 
accomplished  by  an  expert.  For  better  and  for 
worse,  this  little  book  has  been  a  labour  of  love, 


viii  Preface 

and  I  send  it  forth  with  no  expectation  that  it 
will  prove  of  value  to  the  learned,  but  with  a  keen 
hope  that  it  may  attract,  stimulate  and  encourage 
some  spirits  akin  to  that  of  Scotus  himself.  If 
I  merit  thanks  in  any  quarter,  it  will  be  from 
those  who  can  only  find  present  life  tolerable  if 
lived  in  friendship  with  the  past. 

ALICE  GARDNER. 


NEWNHAH  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE. 
March  1900. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

THE     FRANCO-ROMAN,    THE     GREEK,     AND     THE 
IRISHMAN 1-23 

Scotus,  the  Irishman,  introducing  Dionysius  Areopagitica, 
the  Greek,  to  Charles  the  Bald,  the  Franco-Koman,  i.  Char- 
acter and  historical  position  of  Charles,  2.  Works  of 
Dionysius  and  traditions  respecting  him,  5.  John  the  Scot : 
facts  and  fictions  of  his  life,  n.  His  character  as  mediator 
between  East  and  West,  15.  Three  critical  periods  in 
Christian  thought,  21. 


CHAPTER  II. 
THE  UNKNOWN  GOD 24-45 

Theological  tone  of  Scotus  and  of  his  times,  24.  Semitic 
and  Hellenic  ideas  of  the  Divine,  27.  Dionysius  on  the 
Transcendent  God,  28.  Scotus  considers  the  categories 
inapplicable  to  God,  31.  Subjective  character  of  his  theo- 
logy, 32.  Nature  of  revelation,  33.  Creation,  37.  Four- 
fold division  of  nature,  40.  Rejection  of  Pantheism,  43. 
Acceptance  of  Christian  doctrines  in  a  mystic  sense,  43. 


Contents 


CHAPTER  III. 

PAGE 

THE  PREDESTINARIAN  CONTROVERSY         .        .       46-72 

Scotus  not  naturally  controversial,  46.  Beginning  of  dis- 
putes on  Dual  Predestination,  49.  Hincmar  of  Eheims,  49. 
Questions  involved  in  that  of  Predestination,  50.  Character 
of  mediaeval  controversy,  53.  Three  conflicting  views,  54. 
Beginnings  of  Gottschalk,  55.  Eabanus  Maurus  and  the 
Councils  of  Metz  and  Chiersey,  58.  Confessions,  sufferings 
and  death  of  Gottschalk,  61.  Appeal  to  Scotus,  63.  His 
treatise  De  Divina  Praedettinatione,  64.  Opposed  by  Pru- 
deutius  and  Remigius,  67.  New  articles  of  Chiersey  and 
of  Valence,  69.  Bearing  of  questions  on  that  of  ecclesi- 
astical authority,  70. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SYMBOLISM    AND    SACRAMENT.     PART    TAKEN    BY 
SCOTUS  IN  THE  EUCHARISTIC  CONTROVERSY  .    73-96 

Relation  of  philosophy  to  theology,  73.  Connexion  of 
Eucharistic  controversy  with  that  on  Predestination,  74. 
Ideas  of  Scotus  on  sacraments  and  symbols,  76.  Interpre- 
tations of  ritual  and  myth  by  Hellenes  and  Christians,  77. 
Dionysius  on  the  Communion,  81.  Scotus  on  sacramental 
character  of  all  nature  and  of  Christian  ritual,  83.  Early 
beliefs  as  to  change  in  the  consecrated  elements,  85.  Treatise 
of  Radbertus,  85.  Rabanus  and  Ratramnus  oppose,  87. 
Lanfranc  and  Berengarius,  89.  Did  Scotus  write  a  book 
on  the  subject  ? — three  theories,  91.  Sacramental  views  of 
Scotus  above  those  of  either  party,  93. 


Contents  xi 


CHAPTER  V. 

1'AUK 

SCOTUS  AS  OPTIMIST 97-114 

Question  of  optimism  and  evil  more  proper  than  the 
others  to  the  system  of  Scotus,  97.  Evil  only  apparent,  99. 
Theory  of  cyclic  revolutions,  100.  Intellectual  and  moral 
difficulties,  loi.  Final  return  of  the  sensible  world  into 
God,  105.  His  interpretation  of  the  Fall  of  Man,  107. 
The  Incarnation  of  the  Logos,  109.  Nature  of  final  punish- 
ment, 109.  Steps  towards  the  consummation,  H2.  Scotism 
and  Nirvana,  113. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

SCOTUS  AS  SUBJECTIVE  IDEALIST     .        .        .      115-132 

Scotus  and  modern  thinkers,  115.  Discussion  as  to 
existent  and  non-existent,  with  theory  of  locus,  118. 
Matter  not  conceived  apart  from  mind,  121.  The  world  as 
existing  in  and  for  consciousness  only,  122.  Time  and 
space  as  mental  conditions,  124.  Identification  of  thought 
and  being,  126.  The  Divine  as  realized  in  human  con- 
sciousness, 128.  Relation  of  Scotus  to  Nominalists  and 
Realists,  130. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  SCOTUS.    CONCLUSION      .      133-145 

Influence  of  Scotus  not  confined  to  that  of  his  writings, 
133.  His  principles  and  those  of  Tauler  and  the  Freumlv 
Gottes,  135.  The  Theologia  Germanica,  136.  His 
followers  persecuted  as  heretics:  Amalric  of  Bene,  136. 
David  of  Dinant,  138.  Bull  of  Honorius  III  against  De 
Divisione  Naturae,  139.  It  is  put  on  the  Index,  140. 
Contrasts  between  Scotus  and  most  of  his  contemporaries, 
141.  Not  modern  because  not  historical,  143.  His  ethics, 
144.  Hi«  merit  as  an  independent  thinker,  145. 


CHAPTER    I 

INTRODUCTORY 

The  Franco-Roman,  the  Greek,  and  the  Irishman. 

'  In  quibusdam  ...  a  Latinorum  tramite  deviavit,  dum  in 
Graecos  acriter  oculos  intendit.  Quare  et  haereticus  putatus  est.' — 
WILLIAM  OP  MALMESBCRY,  writing  of  John  the  Scot. 

WHATEVER  years  we  may  choose  to  indicate  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  the  Dark  Ages,  that 
period  must  include  the  datejust  about  the  middle 
of  the  ninth  century  of  our  era,  in  which  Charles 
the  Bald,  King  of  the  Franks,  grandson  of  the 
great  restorer  of  the  Roman  Empire,  himself  to 
be  crowned  Emperor  before  his  death,  gave  to 
John  the  Scot,  his  distinguished  guest  from  Ireland, 
the  task  of  translating  from  Greek  into  Latin  the 
works  of  the  mystic  Neo-Platonic  theologian,  who 
goes  by  the  name  of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite. 

That  an  Irishman  should  take  the  Greek  by 
the  hand  and  lead  him  into  the  presence  of  the 
B 


2  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Frank  who  ruled  over  great  part  of  the  Western 
Empire,  seems  a  by  no  means  incongruous  fact 
to  those  who  have  studied  the  history  of  those 
times.  To  realize  its  significance,  let  us  glance 
for  a  moment  at  each  of  the  persons  or  types  that 
figure  in  the  scene  before  us. 

Charles  the  Bald  is  not  a  noble  and  commanding 
figure  in  mediaeval  history.  Trained,  after  his 
over-indulged  boyhood,  in  the  school  of  adversity, 
he  did  not  prove  himself  capable  of  profiting  by 
its  lessons.  He  was  the  youngest  child,  by  the 
clever  Suabian  lady  Judith,  of  the  feeble  Emperor, 
Lewis  the  Pious.  Even  before  his  father's  death, 
his  brothers  had  risen  in  revolt  against  his  mother's 
influence  and  their  father's  partiality  for  the  child 
of  his  old  age.  After  the  death  of  Lewis  in  840, 
we  have,  as  frequently  in  early  Prankish  history, 
a  series  of  fratricidal  wars,  broken  up  by  insecure 
treaties  and  inexplicable  changes  of  side.  The 
partition  treaty  made  at  Verdun  in  843  is  some- 
times taken  as  a  landmark  in  history,  because  by 
it  the  territory  which,  generally  speaking,  makes 
up  modern  France  was  made  into  a  separate 
kingdom  for  Charles,  and  the  oath  by  which  the 
treaty  was  confirmed  gives  us  what  is  taken  to  be 
the  earliest  specimen  of  the  French  language.  But 
if  Charles  might,  in  a  sense,  be  regarded  as  the  first 
King  of  France,  and  though  he  had  one  notable 
French  characteristic — an  appreciation  of  the  ad- 
vantages and  of  the  great  possibilities  of  the  city 


Introductory  3 

of  Paris l — he  neither  devoted  himself  to  the  task 
of  defending  his  Western  realm,  nor  confined  his 
ambition  within  its  borders.  As  unready  as  our 
own  Ethelred,  he  repeatedly  bribed  the  Vikings — 
vainly  as  the  sequel  showed — to  retire  from  the 
coasts  of  Gaul,  or  to  turn  their  arms  one  against 
another.  He  availed  himself  of  deaths  and  quarrels 
among  brothers  and  nephews  to  extend  his  territory 
to  the  north,  and  even,  shortly  before  the  close  of 
his  life,  to  obtain  the  imperial  crown  in  Rome. 
His  life  and  death  were  inglorious  and  ineffectual, 
unmarked  by  great  achievements  even  of  a  transi- 
tory nature.  Yet  in  the  history  of  culture  he 
bears  another  character,  and  continues  the  best 
traditions  of  his  house. 

However  much  we  may  allow  for  the  partiality 
of  panegyrists,  the  fact  that  the  panegyrists  were 
there  proves  that  there  was  a  patron.  And  the 
patronage  of  learning  undertaken  by  the  Caro- 
lingians  was,  after  all,  more  deserving  of  laudation 
than  that  of  Maecenas  or  of  the  Medici,  in  that  it 
was  directed  not  to  foster  and  direct  an  active 
literary  movement,  but  rather  to  strengthen  a 
feeble  cause  in  the  dire  struggle  for  existence.  It 
has  often  been  told  2  how  Charlemagne  laboured  no 
less  assiduously  for  the  revival  of  education  than 

1  According  to  one  (not  undoubted)  copy  of  the  letter  of 
Nicolas  I  to  Charles  the  Bald  concerning  Scotus,  the  latter  was 
head  of  the  School  (Studium)  in  Paris. 

*  Especially  by  Mullinger,  Schools  of  Charles  the  Great ;  and  by 
Guizot,  Histoire  de  la  Civilisation  en  France. 


4  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

for  the  restoration  of  order ;  how,  for  him,  the 
championship  of  Christendom  involved  the  ex- 
tended sway  of  Christian  and  Roman  ideas  no  less 
than  of  the  imperial  arms.  His  court  was  a  centre 
of  education,  such  as  some  of  the  greater  monasteries 
were  to  become  in  later  days,  till  they  in  turn  were 
superseded  in  this  function  by  the  universities. 
The  story  of  how  the  great  Emperor  commended 
the  boys  of  humble  birth  who  had  made  progress 
in  good  learning,  and  sternly  reproached  the  young 
nobles  who  neglected  such  pursuits,  is  too  hackneyed 
to  be  repeated  here.  The  education  of  women  seems 
to  have  been  a  part  of  Charlemagne's  idea  of  civi- 
lization, or  so  we  should  judge  from  the  proficiency 
in  learning  attributed  to  his  daughters.  If,  during 
the  reign  of  his  successor,  Lewis  the  Pious,  there 
was  a  temporary  decline,  which  drew  a  despondent 
wail  from  some  disappointed  scholars,  such  retro- 
gression seems  to  have  been  due  rather  to  the 
general  disorderliness  of  the  times  than  to  any 
wilful  neglect  on  the  part  of  the  Emperor.  Of 
Charles  the  Bald  it  may  be  safely  asserted  that  he 
followed  in  the  steps  of  his  grandfather,  who  had 
summoned  Alcuin  to  his  court,  in  extending  hospi- 
tality to  learned  men.  More  than  this,  he  must 
have  had  some  notion  of  the  particular  lines  in 
which  his  scholarly  guests  excelled,  and  some  in- 
tellectual sympathy  with  them  and  with  their 
ideas,  or  he  would  hardly  have  taken  upon  himself 
to  impose  so  suitable  a  task  on  John  the  Scot,  or 


Introductory  5 

have  appreciated  the  dedication  of  the  work  which 
he  had  suggested. 

But  what  was  that  work1?  If  we  turn  to  the 
Greek  philosopher  in  our  group,  he  seems  to  be 
less  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood  than  a  type.  Yet 
like  many  writers  whose .  personality  has  been 
veiled  in  obscurity,  he  has  very  distinctive  features, 
and  has  appealed  forcibly  to  the  hearts  and  minds 
of  many  men  through  successive  generations. 

The  works  of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite  were 
now  being  for  the  first  time  presented  to  the 
Western  world.  About' a  century  before,  a  copy  of 
them  had  been  given  by  Pope  Paul  I  to  Charles's 
great-grandfather  Pipin.  More  lately,  the  Eastern 
Emperor,  Michael  Balbus,  had  given  a  copy  to 
Lewis  the  Pious,  and  an  abortive  attempt  to  trans- 
late them  had  been  made  by  Abbot  Hildwin  of 
St.  Denis1.  But  on  the  present  occasion  no  pope 
takes  any  part  in  the  transaction.  Relations  were  x 
much  strained  between  the  Eastern  and  the  Western 
Churches,  the  burning  question  as  to  the  relations 
of  papacy  to  patriarchate  helping  to  accentuate  the 
distinctions  in  doctrine  which  were  due  to  deep- 
lying  differences  in  the  character  and  modes  of 
thought  of  Eastern  and  Western  minds.  After  the 
work  was  done,  Pope  Nicolas  I2  wrote  to  com- 

1  Christlieb,  Joih.  Scot.  Er.,  p.  26.     A  life   of  Dionysius  with 
a  rather  inadequate  account  of  his  writings,  by  Hildwin,  is  published 
in  the  Patrologia  of  Migne,  vol.  cvi. 

2  See  his  letter  in  Floss's  edition  of  John  the  Scot,  pp.  1025, 1026. 


6  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

plain  to  Charles  the  Bald  that  a  copy  had  not  been 
sent  for  his  approval.  It  was  not,  of  course,  that 
he  had  any  suspicions  as  to  Dionysius  himself,  but 
the  reputation  of  the  translator  had  become,  as  we 
shall  see,  very  dubious.  Thus  in  the  introduction 
of  the  Greek  to  the  Teuton,  the  representative  of 
the  Roman  hierarchy  plays  the  part  of  a  critical 
outsider. 

But  let  us  turn  to  the  works  of  Dionysius,  which, 
as  has  been  implied,  interest  us  here  as  being  one 
of  the  chief  channels  by  which  the  ideas  and  prin- 
ciples of  Greek,  and  especially  of  Neo-Platonic 
philosophy,  were  conveyed  into  the  stream  of 
Western  civilization,  though  they  never  became 
strong  enough  to  dominate  its  current. 

It  may  not  be  superfluous  to  devote  a  few  words 
to  the  traditions  concerning  Dionysius  the  Areopa- 
gite,  who  is  said,  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
(xvii.  34),  to  have  followed  St.  Paul  after  the 
address  on  Mars'  Hill.  He  had  already,  so  runs 
the  story,  been  prepared  to  receive  the  Gospel  by 
having  been  deeply  impressed  on  beholding  the 
supernatural  eclipse  on  the  day  of  the  Passion, 
when  '  it  was  about  the  sixth  hour ;  and  there  was 
darkness  over  all  the  earth  until  the  ninth  hour.' 
He  was  at  that  time  in  the  city  of  Heliopolis,  and 
sought  enlightenment  from  a  certain  Hierotheus, 
quoted  as  his  master  more  than  once  in  the 
writings.  He  was  made  Bishop  of  Athens  by 
St.  Paul,  but  consorted  also  with  the  other  Apostles, 


Introductory  7 

and  was  with  them  immediately  after  the  death  of 
the  Virgin  Mary.  Subsequently  he  came  to  Paris, 
and  was  martyred  there  with  two  companions. 
This  story  was  believed  by  John  the  Scot,  who 
narrates  it  in  the  preface  to  his  translation,  but 
for  us  it  seems  hardly  worth  refutation.  The 
chronological  difficulties  in  the  way  of  identifying 
the  original  Dionysius  with  St.  Denys  of  Paris 
were  discovered  by  the  critical  mind  of  Abelard  in 
the  twelfth  century,  and  brought  down  upon  him 
even  more  wrath  than  did  his  deviations  from 
Church  doctrine  in  some  really  important  matters. 
But  the  tone  of  the  writings  themselves  is  decisive 
against  the  old  tradition.  The  writer,  whoever  he 
may  have  been,  was  steeped  in  Neo-Platonism, 
and  may  be  said  to  have  adapted  the  Johannine 
theology  and  certain  of  the  more  mystic  elements 
in  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul  to  an  essentially  Greek 
system  of  religion  and  cosmology,  rather  than  to 
have  merely  borrowed  certain  Greek  ideas  to  eluci- 
date the  doctrine  of  the  Apostles.  The  system  of 
Church  organization  which  they  describe  is  far  too 
highly  developed  for  the  age  to  which  they  purport 
to  belong.  Then  again,  we  find  in  them  quotations 
from  Ignatius  and  Clement — a  patent  anachronism 
which  the  acuteness  of  biassed  commentators  has 
sought  to  clear  away.  Furthermore,  if  they  had 
been  written  in  the  first  century,  they  would  have 
furnished  arms  for  many  furious  controversies  in 
succeeding  days  ;  whereas  we  do  not  anywhere  find 


8  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

them  quoted  before  532  A.D.  The  question  of  their 
actual  provenance  falls  beyond  our  present  scope. 
Vacherot,  the  learned  and  delightful  historian  of 
the  School  of  Alexandria,  and  the  illustrious 
Ferdinand  Baur  would  seek  for  their  origin  in 
Athens,  because  of  the  affinity  shown  in  them  for 

\the  doctrines  of  the  Athenian  Neo-Platonist  Proclus. 
JDr.  Westcott1  thinks  that  they  came  from  Syria, 
.'where  the  Honophysite  heresy  (that  which  denies 

Ithe  double  nature  in  Christ)  took  its  rise.  Certainly 
it  was  a  Monophysite  sect  that  first  appealed  to 
Aheir  authority,  though  they  were  early  recognized 

/as  orthodox  both  in  the  East  and  in  the  West. 

(  This  recognition  is  at  first  sight  rather  puzzling  to 
those  who  consider  not  only  their  positive  side — 
their  essentially  Hellenic  character — but  also  their 
negative  or  privative  aspect — the  comparatively 
slight  stress  laid  on  those  dogmas  which  in  Western 
Europe  have  always  been  regarded  as  the  chief 
pillars  of  the  Christian  religioa  In  the  opinion  of 
Baur,  the}7  derived  part  of  the  credit  given  to  them 
from  the  support  they  lent  to  the  hierarchical 
order,  which  needed,  against  the  attacks  of  sacer- 
dotalists,  the  arguments  to  be  drawn  from  the 
inner  meaning  given  to  the  hierarchy  in  the  sym- 
bolic mysticism  of  the  Areopagite.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  it  is  an  important  fact  that  these  writings 
were  regarded  in  the  Church  as  of  great  and 
ancient  authority ;  though,  as  we  shall  see,  as  soon 

1  See  an  interesting  paper  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  1867. 


Introductory  9 

as  any  thinker,  even  were  he  far  more  Christian  in 
tone  than  the  pseudo-Dionysius  himself,  applied 
their  principles  to  the  solution  of  the  theological 
questions  which  agitated  the  Western  world,  he 
was  treated  as  one  who  had  brought  strange  fire  to 
burn  on  the  sacred  altar. 

The  works  of  the  pseudo-Dionysius  which  John 
the  Scot  translated  comprise  almost  all  that  have 
come  down  to  us :  the  treatises  on  the  Celestial 
Hierarchy,  the  Ecclesiastical  Hierarchy,  the  Divine 
Names,  and  the  Mystical  Theology,  besides  a  number 
of  letters  to  notable  persons — Titus,  Polycarp,  and 
others — the  forgery  of  which  is  more  palpable  than 
that  of  the  dissertations.  The  translation  is  not  of 
a  high  order,  but  there  is  evident  a  most  painful 
effort  to  be  accurate.  Where,  as  often  happens,  the 
text  is  corrupt,  the  translator  gives  the  literal 
equivalent  of  the  words,  nobly  indifferent  to  the 
nonsense  produced  in  his  version1.  This  method 
has  the  advantage  of  enabling  critics  to  discover  in 
some  cases  the  actual  words  which  have  suffered 
so  grotesque  a  travesty. 

Besides  his  translations,  John  wrote  a  very 
lengthy  commentary  on  some  of  the  Dionysian 
writings,  which  does  not  seem  to  contain  much  new 
matter  for  those  who  have  read  the  larger  original 
works  of  Scotus  himself. 

1  A  good  instance  of  this  comes  near  the  end  of  Epistle  VIII, 
where  iraiSf  had  been  written  for  irate,  and  John  renders 
'  puer  .  .  .  me ' 


io  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

The  treatise  on  the  Celestial  Hierarchy  is  a 
curious  combination  of  the  Neo-Platonic  doctrine 
of  a  series  of  divine  emanations  with  the  later 
Jewish  teaching  about  angels.  Since  the  writer 
holds  that  the  passively  contemplated  is  superior 
to  the  contemplative,  and  this  again  to  the  active, 
although  every  member  of  the  hierarchy  receives 
from  those  above  it  and  imparts  to  those  below, 
he  can  make  use  both  of  the  Neo-Platonic  terms 
vorjToi  and  voepoi,  and  of  the  names  of  the  three 
triads  which  were  becoming  familiar  to  Christian 
minds  :  Thrones,  Cherubim,  Seraphim  ;  Dominions, 
Virtues,  Powers  ;  Principalities,  Archangels,  Angels. 
In  the  Ecclesiastical  Hierarchy  he  endeavours  to 
show  how  the  institutions  of  the  Church  are 
modelled  on  those  of  the  heavens.  The  bearing 
of  these  treatises  on  the  theological  and  sacra- 
mental system  of  the  Church  as  it  was  at  the  time 
when  John  the  Scot  made  his  translation,  is  an 
interesting  study  which  will  occupy  us  in  the 
following  chapters.  It  is  with  the  deepest  of  all 
theological  ideas  that  the  Divine  Names  and  the 
Mystic  Theology  are  concerned ;  as  they  show  how, 
according  to  the  principles  of  the  higher  symbolism, 
man  may  legitimately  use  positive  terms  as  de- 
scriptive of  the  Divine  Nature,  and  how,  neverthe- 
less, that  Nature  can  only  be  accurately  spoken  of 
in  terms  of  pure  negation.  The  letters  are  of 
varying  degrees  of  interest.  In  one  of  them 1,  the 
1  EP.  VIII. 


Introductory  n 

description  of  a  worthy  man  gloating  over  the 
approaching  retribution  at  hand  for  notable  sinners, 
till  he  is  reproved  by  Christ,  who  comes  forward 
and  declares  himself  ready  to  suffer  once  more  for 
the  salvation  of  men,  is,  perhaps,  almost  the  only 
passage  which  shows  what  modern  readers  would 
regard  as  a  distinctly  Christian  element  in  his 
religious  philosophy. 

Since  these  works  formed  not  only  the  prescribed 
study,  but  the  chief  spiritual  and  intellectual  diet  of 
the  man  who  was  set  to  translate  them,  our  inquiry 
into  the  principles  of  John  the  Scot  will,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  make  us  more  familiar  with  the  Dionysian 
system.  Let  us  now  complete  our  preliminary 
survey  by  looking  briefly  at  the  third  member  of 
our  triad — the  man  by  whom  the  Neo-Platonist 
was  to  be  introduced  to  the  Western  world,  John 
Scotus  Erigena1. 

That  John  the  Scot  was  an  Irishman  there  seems 
little  room  to  doubt,  though  England,  Wales,  and 
Scotland  have  all  set  up  pretensions  to  the  honour 
of  having  given  him  birth.  He  may  seem  a  misty 
figure  beside  Charles  the  Bald,  though  he  is  cer- 
tainly more  substantial  to  us  than  pseudo-Dionysius, 
for  he  at  least  was  no  pseudo  but  a  vigorous  man, 

1  For  careful  and  complete  studies  of  the  life  and  works  of  John 
the  Scot,  see  Floss's  introduction  to  his  works  in  Migne's  Patro- 
loffia ;  Christlieb's  Leben  und  LeJire  des  Joh.  Scotus  Erigena  • 
better  still,  Huber's  Johannes  Scotus  Erigena,  and  Poole's 
Illustrations  of  the  History  of  Mediaeval  Thought,  besides  more 
general  histories  of  philosophy. 


i2  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

however  difficult  it  may  be  to  disengage  his  life 
from  its  legendary  wrappings. 

The  few  facts l  of  which  we  can  rest  assured  are 
that  John  was  born  and  educated  in  Ireland ;  that 
he  came  thence  to  the  court  of  Charles  the  Bald, 
about  the  year  847  A.D. ;  that  he  lived  and  wrote 
at  the  court,  not  adorned  with  any  ecclesiastical 
dignity,  but  enjoying  familiar  intercourse  with  the 
king,  and — almost  certainly — superintending  the 
educational  work  done  in  the  school  of  the  palace  ; 
and  that  he  was  still  alive  and  at  court  in  the  year 
872.  Whether  he  ever  lived  in  Britain  we  cannot 
tell.  An  Irish  monastery  would  have  furnished// 
him  with  most  of  the  intellectual  equipment  which 
he  carried  with  him  to  France.  For  generations, 
the  zeal  for  good  learning  in  the  highly  monasti- 
cized,  perhaps  rather  laxly-ruled  Irish  Church, 
together  with  the  desire  of  imparting  knowledge 
to  the  unlearned,  had  inspired  '  Scots  from  Ireland  2 ' 
to  set  out  on  intellectual  missions  to  the  court  of 
Gaul ;  and  later  on  we  find  complaints  of  the  deluge 
of  Irishmen  which  resemble  all  grumblings  against 
alien  immigrants,  however  beneficent  the  work  of 
such  immigrants  may  be 3.  Here,  however,  two 

1  In  Huber  and  the  other  authorities.     In  Floss's  edition  of  the 
works  of  Scotus  (pp.  90  et  seq.)  are  given,  as  arranged  by  Gale,  the 
chief  notices  which  can  be  taken  as  referring  to  him  in  mediaeval 
(by  no  means  always  contemporary)  writers. 

2  See  Geata  Kur.  Mag.  i.  i  ;  Pertz,  ii.  731,  apud  Poole,  p.  16. 

1  '  Quid  Hiberniam  memorem,  contempto  pelagi  discrimine,  toto 
cum  grege  philosophorum  ad   litora  nostra  migrantem?'  (Ericus 


Introductory  13 

points  with  regard  to  John's  nationality  need  to 
be  noticed:  the  title  Bcotus  and  the  cognomen 
Erigena.  The  former  is  given  to  him  in  the  letters 
of  Pope  Nicolas  I  and  of  the  papal  librarian 
Anastasius,  and  by  other  indisputable  authorities. 
We  are  told  by  his  contemporary,  Prudentius  of 
Troyes,  who  calls  him  Scotigena,  that  he  came 
from  Hibernia.  Of  course  there  is  no  contradiction 
here,  as  the  people  called  Scoti  then  inhabited  the 
northern  part  of  Ireland,  and  the  purveyors  of 
wisdom,  to  whom  we  have  just  referred,  were  Irish 
Scots.  The  name  Erigena  by  itself  would  not  be 
decisive,  especially  as  it  is  not  given  in  the  con- 
temporary documents,  although  the  curious  form 
Jerugena  figures  in  the  title  to  the  translation  of 
Dionysius.  Setting  aside  the  improbable  theory  of 
Gale,  that  John  meant  thereby  to  denote  his  birth- 
place, a  district  called  Eriuven,  in  Herefordshire, 
and  a  yet  more  strange  theory  as  to  his  Herulian 
descent,  we  may  well  suppose  that,  sharing  as  he 
did  in  the  taste  of  his  contemporaries  for  fanciful 
etymologies,  he  transformed  the  Land  of  the  West 
into  the  Land  of  Saints  \ 

It  is  not  unnatural  that  early  chroniclers  should 
have  endeavoured  to  bring  John  into  connexion 
with  Alfred  the  Great,  and  even  to  connect  him 

Altissiodorensis,  apud  Floss,  p.  16).  This  may  be  laudatory,  but 
should  be  compared  with  the  rage  of  Prudentius  against  the  Celtic 
eloquence  used  by  John. 

1  A  similar  fancy  is  seen  in  the  classical  name  for  Jerusalem  : 
Hierosoluma. 


i4  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

with  the  foundation  of  the  University  of  Oxford. 
On  the  other  side  is  the  negative  fact  that  he  is  not 
mentioned  byAsser — for  the  'John,  priest  and  monk, 
of  the  race  of  the  Old  Saxons,'  of  whom  Asser  writes 
that  Alfred  made  him  Abbot  of  Athelney,  can 
hardly  be  the  same  with  our  Erigena.  William  of 
Malmesbury,  writing  during  the  first  half  of  the 
twelfth  century,  tells  of  the  coming  of  John  the 
Scot  to  Malmesbury,  and  of  his  being  made  master  of 
the  monastic  school.  He  is  not  ignorant  as  to  the 
chief  of  John's  works,  the  peculiar  character  of  his 
writings,  and  his  life  at  the  court  of  Charles  the 
Bald,  concerning  which  he  tells  two  rather  puerile 
anecdotes  which  do  not  very  well  accord  with  the 
character  of  John  as  we  should  picture  it  from 
his  works1.  Added  to  these  is  the  strange  story 
of  his  end,  how  his  scholars  pierced  him  to  death 
with  their  pens.  His  epitaph  was  to  be  read  at 
Malmesbury : 

'  Conditus  hoc  tumulo  sanctus  sophista  loannes, 
Qui  ditatus  erat  vivens  iam  dogmate  miro ; 
Martyrio  tandem  meruit  conscendere  coelum, 
Quo  semper  cuncti  regnant  per  secula  sancti.' 

But  the  date  of  this  account  is  many  centuries 
after  the  event  it  pretends  to  relate,  and  the  epitaph 

1  Lib.  v.  de  PontlficObus,  apud  Floss,  p.  91.  One  of  these  is  the 
well-known  repartee  :  '  Quid  distat  inter  Sottum  et  Scottum  ?  .  .  . 
' '  Tabula  tantum  " ' ;  and  the  other  is  the  argument  to  justify  the 
division  of  two  big  and  one  small  fish  among  two  big  and  one  small 
man,  by  giving  in  fairness  the  two  big  fish  to  the  small  man  and  the 
small  fish  to  the  two  big  men. 


Introductory  15 

itself  is  not  of  undoubted  authenticity.  Minor 
difficulties  have  been  suggested  :  Would  the  ortho- 
dox Alfred  have  harboured  a  man  under  the  papal 
ban?  Would  John  have  been  made  schoolmaster 
at  the  advanced  age  which  he  must  have  reached 
before  he  came  to  England,  if  this  story  is  true  ? 
The  term  c  sanctus  sophista '  suits  him  well  enough, 
but  his  relations  with  his  pupils,  judging  from 
his  dialogue  with  one  of  them  in  De  Divisions 
Naturae,  were  not  of  such  a  distressing  kind  as  is 
supposed  in  the  story  of  his  martyrdom. 

To  turn  from  fiction  to  fact,  from  nebulous  legend 
to  the  man  as  he  reveals  himself  to  us  in  his  books, 
let  us  see  how  far,  or  in  what  respects,  John  the 
Scot  was  fit  to  undertake  the  task  of  mediating 
between  Eastern  and  Western  thought. 

In  the  first  place,  his  tone  of  mind  and  feelings 
was  in  many  respects  Greek,  more  truly  Greek 
than  even  that  of  Dionysius  himself.  For  if,  as 
has  been  sometimes  said,  the  chief  characteristic 
of  the  Greeks  was  to  be  seekers — to  be  always 
striving  after  truth  and  beauty — then  John  the 
Scot,  Irish  though  he  might  be,  was  a  Greek  of 
the  Greeks.  He  never  seems  to  rest  satisfied  with 
any  principle  that  he  has  laid  down,  but  follows  it 
on  to  its  utmost  conclusions.  If  his  argument  is 
beset  with  difficulties,  he  prepares  himself  to  face 
them.  Except  in  professedly  controversial  works, 
where  vituperation  of  an  opponent  is  part  of  the 
stock  in  trade,  he  is  less  inclined  to  denounce  than 


16  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

to  examine,  and   where   he   does   denounce,   it  is 
rather  because  his  adversary's  views  lead  to  impious 
misrepresentations  of  great   truths   than   because  <- 
they  conflict  with  the  established  order. 

With  this  seeking  attitude  we  find  naturally 
a  lofty  conception  of  the  claims  of  human  reason. 
Not  that  Scotus  was  unwilling  to  acknowledge  the 
limits  of  human  intelligence — in  this  respect  he 
was,  as  we  shall  see,  more  modest  and  more  far- 
sighted  than  most  of  his  contemporaries  and 
successors — but  he  admitted  no  rights  on  the 
part  of  any  external  authority  to  interfere  with 
the  legitimate  processes  of  the  human  mind. 
'Authority,'  he  says,  'proceeds  from  right  reason, 
not  reason  from  authority.  .  .  .  Rightful  authority  ( 
seems  to  me  nothing  else  than  truth  discovered  by 
the  power  of  reason,  and  committed  to  writing 
by  the  holy  Fathers  for  the  benefit  of  posterity  V 
True,  Augustine  says  something  of  the  same  kind  2 ; 
but  Scotus  seems  to  hold  this  view  more  strongly 
than  Augustine  did.  Of  course  he  considers  that 
the  Scriptures  and  the  authorized  writings  of  the 
Fathers  ought  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  results  of 
rational  investigation.  Like  other  commentators, 
he  has  no  scruple  in  twisting  scriptural  texts  or 
citing  isolated  passages  to  confirm  his  own  theories. 
But  when  there  is  apparent  contradiction,  as  in  the 
passage  which  gives  rise  to  the  expression  of  this 
principle,  he  boldly  follows  the  light  of  reason. 

1  De  Divisions  Naturae,  i.  69.  2  De  Ordin.  ii.  9,  26. 


Introductory  17 

Such  being  his  view  as  to  the  paramount  claims 
of  reason,  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  him  identi- 
fying religion  with  philosophy.  '  For  what  is  the 
study  of  philosophy  other  than  the  explanation 
of  the  rules  of  that  religion  by  means  of  which 
God,  the  highest  and  principal  Cause  of  all  things, 
is  made  the  object  of  humble  worship  and  of 
reasonable  inquiry  ? l '  Here  again  he  quotes 
St.  Augustine,  but  he  seems  in  fact  to  go  further 
than  his  authority.  If  his  definition  or  description 
of  philosophy  does  not  accord  with  that  of  the 
ancient  Greeks  in  all  respects,  it  is  quite  applicable 
to  those  later  schools  with  which  Christianity  was 
brought  into  contact,  especially  the  Neo-Platonists 
and  the  Neo-Pythagoreans. 

Cognate  to  these  points  of  common  interest 
between  our  Irish  thinker  and  the  Greek  philoso- 
phers is  the  high  value  he  places  on  the  contempla- 
tive life.  This  appears  throughout  his  writings. 
In  an  age  in  which  monasticism  was  flourishing 
and  was  opposing  a  counteracting  influence  to  the 
materializing  tendencies  of  a  warlike  society,  our 
philosopher — whether  or  not  a  monk  himself — was 
not  alone  in  emphasizing  the  importance  of  the 
inner  and  the  intellectual  life.  But  whereas 
monastic  piety  was  generally  more  directed  to  the 
ascetic  and  passive  aspects  of  contemplation,  Scotus 
would  find  in  the  highest  spiritual  spheres  full 
scope  for  the  exercise  of  intellectual  energy. 

1  De  Praedestinatione,  i.  i. 
C 


is  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Thinking  as  he  thought  and  taught  to  think  was 
hard  work,  and  needed  all  the  aid  of  the  logical 
methods  of  the  ancients.  The  impossibility  for 
human  beings  to  attain  to  any  kind  of  knowledge 
other  than  that  which  is  involved  in  self-knowledge  ]/ 
of  the  most  intimate  kind  is  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  his  philosophy. 

With  this  natural  tendency  to  speculative 
thought,  and  the  loose  interpretation  of  dogma 
which  naturally  accompanied  it ;  with  a  disposition 
to  soar  after  ideals  rather  than  to  lay  down  laws ; 
John  the  Scot  was  out  of  reach  of  those  theological 
and  philosophical  tendencies  of  his  time,  which 
were  bringing  Latinity  into  the  world  of  ideas  at 
the  same  time  that  the  Holy  Roman  Church  and 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire  were  giving  a  kind  of 
social  Latinity  to  Western  Christendom.  Rightly 
does  William  of  Malmesbury  l  say  of  him  that  '  he 
deviated  from  the  path  of  the  Latins  while  he  kept 
his  eyes  intently  fixed  on  the  Greeks  ;  wherefore 
he  was  reputed  a  heretic.'  His  regard  for  Greece  as 
entirely  superior  to  Rome,  and  as  about  to  supersede 
the  imperial  city  in  honour  and  power,  is  expressed 
very  strongly  in  some  lines — if  they  are  really 
his  2 — appended  to  his  translation  of  Dionysius. 

It  is,  however,  almost  superfluous  to  say,  that 
with  a  '  soul  naturally  Platonic,'  John  was  not 
a  well-read  Greek  scholar.  He  knew,  at  least, 

1  De  Pont.  v.  apud  Floss,  p.  91. 

*  Christlieb  considers  that  they  are  not  by  Scotus,  p.  28. 


Introductory  19 

some  stories  from  Homer  l ;  he  knew  something  of 
Aristotle 2,  but  probably  only  from  fragmentary 
translations,  including  an  exposition  of  the  Cate- 
gories attributed  to  St.  Augustine 3 ;  even  Plato, 
whom  he  calls  '  philosophantium  de  mundo  maxi- 
mus  4,'  was  perhaps  only  known  to  him  by  means 
of  a  Latin  translation  of  the  Timaeus.  But  Platonic 
doctrines  had  filtered  down  into  books  which  were 
accessible  to  him,  such  as  those  of  Boethius,  whom 
he  repeatedly  quotes  ;  the  Greek  Fathers,  especially 
Gregory  of  Nyssa  and  Gregory  Nazianzen,  whom, 
strange  to  say,  he  regards  as  one  person 5 ;  and  most 
notably  into  that  great  storehouse  whence,  for 
very  various  purposes,  theologians  of  all  shades 
have  ever  fortified  themselves  with  things  new  and 
old — the  voluminous  writings  of  Augustine.  But 
none  of  these  seem  so  entirely  to  have  been 
assimilated  into  his  mental  fabric  as  the  works  of 
Dionysius,  which  he  probably  first  found  at  the 
court  of  Charles  the  Bald.  If  it  were  not  too  bold 
a  conjecture  to  make  on  our  very  insufficient  data, 
we  might  suggest  that  the  fame  of  those  writings 
and  the  desire  to  see  and  handle  them  had  first 

1  As   (De  Div.  Nat.   iii.  39)    the   recognition  of   Odysseus  by 
his  dog. 

2  Whom  he  calls  '  acutissimus  apud  Graecos  . . .  naturalium  rerum 
discretions  repertor.' 

s  See  Poole,  chap,  i,  for  the  Library  at  York.     John  may  have   ,___ 
seen  more  Greek  books  in  Ireland,  but  it  is  hardly  probable. 

4  De  Div.  Nat.  i.  31. 

5  Ibid.  iii.  38.     But  he  certainly  distinguishes  them  in  ii.  27.    Can 
the  '  qui  etiam  Nazianzenus  vocatur '  possibly  be  a  copyist's  gloss  ? 

C  2 


20 


Studies  in  John  the  Scot 


attracted  him  from  his  '  Land  of  Saints.'  Next  to 
Dionysius,  and  chiefly  valued1  as  throwing  light 
on  the  thoughts  of  the  Areopagite,  come  the  i 
treatises  of  Maximus  the  Monk,  some  of  which  he 
translated,  and  which  he  often  quotes.  He  also 
speaks  with  great  respect  of  Origen,  who  was,  like 
himself,  a  Hellenic  Christian  born  out  of  due  time. 
He  makes  a  pathetic  and  not  undignified  figure, 
this  eager,  slightly-built 2  Irishman,  with  his  subtle 
mind,  his  studious  habits,  his  deeply  reverent 
spirit,  his  almost  fanatical  devotion  to  the  wise 
men  of  former  days,  Pagan  or  Christian,  who  had 
lived  in  the  light  of  a  wider  civilization :  called 
upon  to  fight  the  battles  of  the  West  with  arms 
forged  in  the  East,  and  reprimanded  even  in  the 
hour  of  conquest  for  having  transgressed  the  rules 
of  the  field.  Whether  or  no  the  ugly  story  of  his 
death  by  his  scholars'  pens  may  contain  any  truth, 
he  had  to  endure  sharp  thrusts  from  the  pens  of 
those  whom  he  sought  to  instruct,  and  who  were 
not  able  to  appreciate  his  teaching.  He  may  or 
he  may  not  have  rested  beneath  a  slab  on  which  he 
was  commemorated  as  a  martyr,  but  assuredly 
he  was  a  witness  for  the  truth,  some  aspects  of  ,  / 
which  he  could  see  clearly,  but  could  not  make 
manifest  to  more  than  a  very  few,  either  of  his 
contemporaries  or  of  the  men  of  later  times. 

1  See  introduction  to  translation  of  the  Ambigua  of  Maximus. 
8  '  Perexilis  corporis,'  if  William  of  Malmesbury  followed  a  safe 
tradition. 


21 


There  have  been  three  critical  periods  in  the 
world's  history  in  which  it  has  seemed  possible 
that  the  religious  life  of  a  whole  society  might 
become  inspired  by  a  pure  and  fervent  zeal  bounded 
and  directed  by  a  sane  and  free  philosophy,  a 
philosophy  rationally  eclectic  in  borrowing  from 
the  wisdom  of  the  past,  broadly  sympathetic  and 
humane  in  its  appreciation  of  moral  excellence  in 
all  times  and  places.  The  first  of  these  crises  was 
in  the  reign  of  Alexander  Severus,  when  the  young 
Emperor's  virtuous  mother,  Mammaea,  was  in 
correspondence  with  the  Christian  philosopher, 
Origen  ;  and  it  seemed  as  if  Christianity  might  have 
been  adopted  by  the  Empire  disinterestedly  and  on 
its  own  merits,  under  conditions  which  might  have 
promised  it  a  healthy,  peaceful,  and  eminently 
reasonable  development  through  succeeding  ages. 
But  this  was  not  to  be.  Nearly  thirteen  hundred 
years  later,  when  the  need  of  a  reform  in  the 
Church — both  of  head  and  members — in  doctrine, 
discipline,  and  worship,  was  evident  to  every 
serious-minded  person,  it  seemed  as  if  the  men  of 
the  New  Learning,  enthusiastic  as  John  the  Scot 
himself  for  Greek  ideas,  attached,  some  of  them,  as 
he  was,  to  the  teaching  of  the  Areopagite,  might 
have  found  a  remedy  for  abuses  without  making 
a  sharp  and  final  breach  with  the  past ;  might  have 
delivered  men's  minds  from  one  tyranny  without 
subjugating  them  to  another ;  might  have  annihilated 
superstition  without  doing  violence  to  any  objects 


22 


Studies  in  John  the  Scot 


worthy  of  reverential  regard.  But  this  again  was 
not  to  be.  And  now  we  see,  almost  in  the  middle 
point  of  the  time  between  these  two  great  oppor- 
tunities, another  of  the  '  might-have-beens '  of  the 
spiritual  history  of  Europe.  If  the  intellect  and 
the  devotion  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  followed  the 
lines  of  John  Scotus,  there  would  have  been  no 
scholasticism,  but  the  growth  of  a  philosophy 
Christian  in  its  teleology  and  its  ethics,  acute  and 
probably,  as  time  went  on,  critical  in  its  methods, 
always  progressive  and  turned  to  the  light.  The 
gross  materialism,  the  lurid  horror  of  the  unseen, 
the  spirit  of  persecution,  the  slavish  deference  to 
ecclesiastical  authority,  which  make  the  darker 
side  of  the  Middle  Ages,  would  not  have  been  there. 
But  men  are  not  always  most  readily  moved  by 
the  highest  ideals ;  rules  are  found  more  necessary 
for  society  than  aspirations  ;  statements  which  seem 
to  be  definite  are  more  generally  received  than  such 
as  only  pretend  to  be  approximations  to  an  incom- 
prehensible truth.  There  have  been  '  Platonic 
revivals '  since  that  day,  and  there  are  likely  to  be 
others  from  time  to  time  so  long  as  man  moves  and 
thinks  on  earth  ;  but  if  the  future  is  in  this  respect 
bound  to  resemble  the  past,  their  influence,  if  deep, 
will  never  be  very  wide. 

But  if,  in  our  own  day  ],  we  see  traces  in  the 
religious  ideas  and  the  general  outlook  of  a  good 

1  This  thought  is  emphasized  in  the  last  of  the  Hulsean  Lectures 
for  1898-9,  by  Archdeacon  Wilson. 


Introductory  23 

many  educated  people  of  a  reaction  against  the 
definite,  juristic,  inelastic  spirit,  and  all  the  influ- 
ences which  are  summed  up  in  the  word  Latinity, 
and  a  desire  after  a  free  intellectual  life  with  a  vast 
spiritual  background — such  as  may  be  denoted  by 
the  words  Christian  Hellenism — it  seems  natural 
that  some  among  us  should  look  with  interest  on 
the  labours  and  the  productions  of  John  the  Scot. 
It  is  far  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present  writer 
to  examine  in  detail  all  the  works  of  our  author, 
and  to  assign  to  each  its  place  in  theological 
literature ;  that  task  has  already  been  achieved 
by  much  abler  hands.  But  if  we  dwell  for  a  while 
on  a  few  of  the  points  in  which  Scotus  seems  to 
show  philosophic  insight,  and  observe  the  changed 
condition  of  the  problems  before  him  when  they 
were  subjected  to  the  light  derived  from  his 
dominant  ideas,  we  may  be  a  little  better  able  to 
realize  the  conflict  among  mental  and  moral  forces 
in  the  very  early  days  of  European  culture.  And 
though  it  may  seem  a  bold  course  to  take,  it  will 
perhaps  be  the  surest  way  of  attaining  our  end, 
if  we  start  from  the  most  fundamental  and  pre- 
dominant idea  in  all  philosophic  thought. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   UNKNOWN   GOD 

'O  Thou  that  in  our  bosom's  shrine 
Dost  dwell — unknown  because  divine ; 

I  will  not  frame  one  thought  of  what 
Thou  mayest  either  be  or  not ; 
I  will  not  prate  of  thus  and  so, 
Nor  be  profane  with  yes  and  no ; 
Enough  that  in  our  soul  and  heart 
Thou,  whatsoe'er  Thou  mayst  be,  art.' 

A.  H.  CLOUGH. 

WHILE  it  may  safely  be  asserted  that  in  order 
to  understand  thoroughly  the  character  of  any 
philosophic  school,  any  social  or  political  combi- 
nation of  persons,  even  any  individual  man  or 
woman,  we  must  penetrate  to  their  inmost  con- 
victions and  habits  of  thought  on  matters  to  do 
with  religion  and  theology,  this  is  most  evidently 
the  case  where  a  distinctly  theological  tone  pre- 
dominates in  the  mental  and  moral  atmosphere 
wherein  such  character  has  its  environment.  We 
need  not  stop  to  discuss  why  the  theological 


25 

element  in  life  and  thought  is  more  prominent 
at  some  times  than  at  others,  nor  whether  the 
prevalence  of  theological  conceptions  always  varies 
with  the  strength  of  religious  convictions.  Cer- 
tainly, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  both  the  period 
in  which  the  writings  originated  which  John  the 
Scot  introduced  to  the  Western  world,  and  the  days 
in  which  he  himself  stood  before  Charles  the  Bald, 
were  distinctly  theological  in  tone.  All  historians 
of  philosophy  have  noted  the  tendency  to  dwell 
on  the  supernatural  which  marks  the  later  sects 
of  Greek  thought.  And  we  have  already  seen  that 
the  intellectual  food  on  which  John  the  Scot  was 
nourished  consisted  mainly  of  theological  treatises, 
insomuch  that  what  he  knew  of  the  more  general 
and  open  fields  of  knowledge  had  been  in  great 
part  gleaned  from  the  patristic  writings.  It  was 
not,  for  most  people,  an  age  of  much  or  of  deep 
thought,  this  middle  part  of  the  ninth  century;  but 
it  was  an  age  in  which  whatever  thought  there 
was  became  necessarily  directed  into  theological 
channels.  Art  had  declined  to  its  nadir ;  physical 
science,  poetry,  speculative  inquiry,  had  no  hope 
of  resuscitation  unless  they  allowed  themselves  to 
be  pressed  into  the  service  of  theology  and  religion. 
But  even  apart  from  the  current  of  his  times,  John 
the  Scot  was  one  whose  mind  naturally  turned  to 
subjects  where  there  was  more  scope  for  lofty 
speculation  than  for  minute  determination. 

It  is,  then,  in  his  theology,  first  and  foremost, 


26  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

that  we  see  the  Greek  and  Eastern  tone  of  John's 
mind  as  opposed  to  the  Latin  or  German  and  ' 
Western  tendencies  of  his  times.  If  we  try  to 
trace  his  ideas  and  those  of  men  who  have  shared 
them  up  to  their  ultimate  sources,  we  find  the  task 
wellnigh  impossible.  In  framing  its  conception 
of  God,  no  sect,  no  human  mind,  can  dare  to  be 
either  quite  original  or  entirely  dependent  upon 
others.  Men  accept  suggestions  that  come  to  them, 
they  know  not  whence,  and  develop  them,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  into  forms  that  may  bear 
a  close  resemblance  to  others  which  they  have 
never  met.  In  times  when  religion  and  philosophy 
are  eclectic,  the  origin  and  progress  of  religious 
ideas  are  all  the  more  difficult  to  follow.  In  reading 
the  works  of  the  Neo-Platonic  philosophers,  as  in  y 
hearing  some  of  the  sermons  of  our  own  preachers, 
we  are  often  surprised  by  a  remark  that  seems 
striking  and  original  till  we  have  met  it,  often 
couched  in  the  same  phraseology,  in  some  other 
region  whence  it  may  or  may  not  have  come  to 
its  more  recent  propounder — probably  he  himself 
knows  as  little  as  we. 

Yet  there  are  certain  broad  distinctions  between 
the  ways  in  which  man  has  represented  to  his 
mind  the  idea  of  the  Divine,  which  may  be  said 
to  distinguish  certain  races  or  certain  stages  of 
development.  Thus  we  may  say  that  generally 
the  Jewish  idea  of  God  was  that  of  a  Creator  and 
Ruler  of  nature  and  man,  whereas  the  last,  as  per- 


The  Unknown  God  27 

haps  the  first,  word  of  Greek  philosophy  was  the 
recognition  of  an  all- permeating  divine  life.  Yet 
history  shows  that  bridges  had  been  built,  especially 
at  Alexandria,  between  the  Semitic  and  the  Hellenic 
conceptions  of  Divinity.  The  grandest  religious 
expression  of  Pagan  aspirations  —  the  hymn  of 
Cleanthes  the  Stoic — is  an  address  to  '  The  most 
glorious  of  the  Immortals,  Zeus  the  many-named, 
the  Ordainer  of  Nature.'  Again,  the  idea  of  a 
transcendent  God  is  sometimes  regarded  as  specially 
characteristic  of  Plato.  And1  it  was  a  Christian 
who  felt  himself  to  be  a  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews 
that  taught  his  converts  of  a  '  God  and  Father  of 
all,  which  is  above  all,  and  through  all,  and  in  you 
all.'  The  conceptions  of  a  transcendent,  of  an 
immanent,  and  of  a  creating  and  ruling  God,  how- 
ever inconsistent  or  even  antagonistic  they  may 
appear,  are  often  found  blended  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  thoughtful  and  religious  minds.  Yet  no 
mind  can  habitually  dwell  indifferently  on  each 
of  these  several  aspects  of  the  dimly  apprehended 
yet  intensely  realized  object  of  the  spiritual  con- 
sciousness. And  each  man  who  insists  on  one 
aspect  is  doing  service  to  the  world,  which  cannot 
afford  to  lose  permanently  any  portion  of  truth 
which  may  have  been  temporarily  obscured,  even 
for  generations.  The  men  who  surrounded  and  criti- 
cized John  the  Scot  might — for  they  were  orthodox 

1  If  the   Pauline  authorship  of  the   Epistle  to  the   Ephesians 
be  accepted.     If  not,  the  above  argument  is  not  greatly  affected. 


28  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

and  held  the  Quicunque  vult — have  acknowledged 
in  words  that  God  is  incomprehensible,  yet  they 
thought  they  knew  pretty  clearly  His  mind/ 
towards  the  world,  and  were  not  afraid  to  attribute 
to  Him  many  of  their  own  impulses  and  passions. 
To  Scotus,  as  to  Dionysius  and  his  predecessors, 
God  was  the  super-essential,  super-intellectual 
principle  beyond  all  being  and  thought,  though,  as 
a  thinking  man,  Scotus  was  bound  to  find  some 
relation  between  that  principle  and  the  world  of 
nature  and  of  humanity ;  and  as  a  Christian  man 
he  was  bound  to  bring  his  aspiring  theological  con- 
ceptions into  some  sort  of  accord  with  the  moral 
and  religious  teaching  of  the  Scriptures  and  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church. 

To  express  the  idea  of  the  transcendent  God  in 
the  most  uncompromising  language  we  may  quote 
from  the  writings  of  the  pseudo-Dionysius,  who 
was  here  closely  followed  by  John  the  Scot.  The 
writer  is  maintaining  the  character  of  the  Athenian 
worshipper  of  an  Unknown  God.  Of  course  there 
is  no  reason  for  connecting  the  inscription  recorded 
to  have  been  noticed  by  St.  Paul  with  any  expres- 
sion of  philosophic  agnosticism.  Altars  to  unknown 
gods  are  met  with  on  various  occasions ;  thus 
Pausanias  saw  one  at  Phalerum1,  and  they  were 
probably  dedicated  rather  to  such  deities  as,  though 
worth  conciliating,  were  sufficiently  unimportant 
to  be  lost  in  a  crowded  pantheon,  than  to  any  who 

1  Description  of  Greece,  i.  i,  4. 


The  Unknown  God  29 

were  too  vast  to  be  comprehended  within  the  range 
of  the  Olympians.  A  portentous  event  might 
manifest  the  present  power  of  a  god  or  goddess 
without  giving  any  clue  to  the  name.  But  even 
if  grounded  on  an  error  in  archaeology,  the  assign- 
ment of  these  writings  to  a  worshipper,  in  apostolic 
times,  of  an  unknown  and  unknowable  deity,  is 
in  complete  accordance  with  their  whole  tone  and 
character. 

It  is  in  the  Mystical  Theology  that  Dionysius, 
endeavouring  to  treat  of  God  in  Himself,  apart 
from  man  and  nature,  is  obliged  to  use  terms  of 
the  purest  negation J.  Thus  he  says  :  '  He  is  neither 
soul  nor  mind ;  He  has  neither  imagination,  nor 
opinion,  nor  word,  nor  thought ;  nor  is  He  word 
or  thought ;  He  uttereth  no  word  and  thinketh  no 
thought;  neither  is  He  number,  nor  order,  nor 
greatness,  nor  littleness,  nor  equality,  nor  inequality, 
nor  likeness,  nor  difference ;  He  standeth  not,  nor 
moveth  He,  neither  doth  He  take  rest ;  He  hath 
not  power,  nor  is  He  power,  nor  light ;  He  liveth 
not,  neither  is  He  life ;  He  is  not  being,  nor 
eternity,  nor  time ;  neither  is  He  within  touch  of 
reason;  He  is  not  skill,  nor  is  He  truth,  nor 
dominion,  nor  wisdom ;  neither  one,  nor  unity,  nor 
divinity,  nor  goodness,  nor  yet  spirit,  as  known 
to  us ;  neither  sonship  nor  fatherhood,  nor  any- 
thing that  is  known  to  us  or  to  any  other  beings  ; 
neither  is  He  of  the  things  that  are,  nor  of  those 
1  De  Myst.  Theol.,  end. 


30  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

that  are  not ;  neither  do  the  things  that  are  know 
Him  in  that  He  is,  nor  doth  He  know  the  things 
that  are  in  that  they  are ;  neither  doth  any  word 
pertain  to  Him,  nor  name,  nor  thought ;  He  is 
neither  darkness  nor  light,  neither  error  nor  truth  ; 
neither  is  there  for  Him  any  place  nor  any  removal ; 
for  when  we  place  and  when  we  remove  those  that 
come  after  Him,  we  do  not  so  with  Him ;  for  the 
perfect  and  unifying  Cause  is  beyond  any  place, 
and  the  excellent  Simplicity  withdrawn  from  all 
things  is  beyond  any  taking  away,  and  stands 
apart  from  all  things.' 

This  attempt  at  entire  negation  may  seem  to 
break  down  in  the  use  of  the  word  Cause.  In 
a  somewhat  similar  passage  in  Origen1  we  have 
the  expression  Father  of  truth,  of  knowledge,  and 
the  like.  Here  at  least  we  are  deviating  from  the 
purely  literal,  which,  according  to  Dionysius,  must 
here  be  equivalent  to  the  purely  negative.  In 
fact,  the  barrenness  of  these  regions  of  thought 
must  drive  men  into  affirmations  of  some  kind, 
even  if  they  carefully  guard  themselves  by  assert- 
ing that  such  affirmations  can  only  have  a  symbo- 
lical or  figurative  meaning.  Perhaps  the  last  word 
of  scepticism  might  be  a  question  as  to  the  literal 
truth  even  of  such  negative  statements  as  those 
just  given.  But,  leaving  this  suggestion  on  one 
side,  we  may  observe  that  John  the  Scot  pondered 
much  on  the  Kara^anKr}  and  the  a-nofyaTiK.-^  of  the 
1  Com.  St.  Jn.,  quoted  by  Vacherot,  vol.  i.  p.  264. 


The  Unknown  God  31 

Dionysian  theology,  and  derived  a  clearer  view  on 
the  subject  from  the  works  of  Maximus  the  Monk, 
some  of  which  he  afterwards  translated  into  Latin1. 

A  considerable  portion  of  the  first  book  of  Scotus' 
De  Divisione  Naturae  is  taken  up  with  an  examina- 
tion of  the  ten  categories,  so  as  to  show  that  not 
one  of  them  can  be  rightly  applied  to  God.  That 
of  relation  might  seem  to  be  implied  in  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  but  the  philosopher  shows  that 
any  predication  of  relations  such  as  fatherhood  and 
sonship  to  the  Divine  Being  can  only  be  figurative. 
'Locus,'  which  he  makes  equivalent  to  definition, 
cannot  be  asserted  of  that  which  is  not  contained 
in  any  intelligent  mind.  As  to  quality,  we  cannot 
ascribe  to  the  Universal  even  the  highest  of  proper- 
ties. He  is  not  wise  and  good,  but  more-than-wise, 
more-than-good,  and  the  like.  He  does  not  even 
fall  under  the  category  of  being,  since  He  is  more- 
than-being.  Action  and  suffering  may  in  Scripture 
be  frequently  predicated  of  God.  But  such  pre- 
dication is  always  in  a  transferred  or  symbolical 
sense. 

How  then,  we  may  ask,  can  Dionysius,  or  Scotus, 
or  any  of  their  followers,  believe  in  anything 
approximating  to  a  divine  revelation?  How  can 
such  an  immeasurably  distant  Being,  or  Hyper- 
being,  be  brought  into  the  reach  of  human  conscious- 
ness? How  can  this  doctrine  be  assimilated  to 

1  See  prologue  to  Scot's  translation  of  the  Ambigua  S.  Maximi, 
Floss,  p.  1196. 


32  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

those  of  the  Church  1  And  how  can  it  satisfy  the 
requirements  of  a  natural  religion  which  seeks  for 
a  principle  of  life  and  of  harmony  not  beyond,  but 
within  the  actual  and  visible  world  ? 

As  we  endeavour  to  indicate  the  lines  along 
which  the  solution  of  the  problem  is  to  be  found, 
we  may  observe  that  their  agnosticism  (if  this 
term  be  taken  in  its  simplest  sense)  does  not 
preclude  these  writers  from  the  free  use  of  significant 
terms  found  in  the  speech  of  ordinary  people.  If 
these  terms  are  consciously  used  by  them  in  a 
figurative  sense,  this  does  not  imply  unreality  to 
those  who  have  grasped  the  fact  that  all  our 
language  and  thought  must  necessarily  deal  in 
symbols  and  figures.  To  this  point  we  shall  return 
in  our  chapter  on  symbol  and  sacrament.  Here 
we  may  lay  stress  on  the  clearness  gained  by 
removing  our  questions  from  the  sphere  of  the 
objective  into  that  of  the  subjective.  We  have  no 
longer  to  puzzle  ourselves  with  efforts  to  prove 
that  God  is  this  or  that,  but  to  inquire  whether 
we  are  justified  in  thinking  of  Him  under  such  and 
such  attributes,  and  denoting  Him  by  such  and  such 
names.  Dionysius  wrote  a  whole  treatise  on  '  the 
Divine  Names,'  and  Scotus  conceived  more  clearly 
than  did  his  master  the  nature  of  the  mind  and 
its  limits  in  endeavouring  to  comprehend  the 
Divine.  Man  can  only  know  what  is  in  his  own 
mind.  We  can  inquire  '  not  how  things  are  either 
eternal  or  created,  but  for  what  reason  they  tnay  be 


The  Unknown  God  33 

called  both  created  and  eternal.'  This  reason  may 
not  be  easy  to  find,  nor  is  it  a  light  matter  to  lay 
down  laws  as  to  the  symbolism  which  may  be  used 
to  illustrate  the  Divine  Nature,  but  the  task  is  one 
to  which  the  highest  human  powers  are  not  so 
inadequate  as  they  needs  must  be  to  assail  the 
great  theological  questions  in  direct  attack. 

Of  course  it  is  insufficient  to  say  that  the  ad- 
missible names  of  God  are  those  given  in  Scripture, 
or  handed  down  by  holy  men,  since  both  Dionysius 
and  John  the  Scot  are  very  free  in  their  use  of 
Scripture,  and  quite  eclectic  in  their  citations  from 
theologians.  But  it  is  plain  throughout  their 
writings  that  no  outward  voice  is  regarded  as 
capable  of  doing  more  than  corroborate  that  which 
speaks  within  the  soul.  Man  can  name  and  can 
think  of  God  because  in  his  inmost  substance  he  is 
of  God.  '  All  divine  things,'  says  Dionysius,  'in  so 
far  as  they  are  manifested  to  us,  are  known  only 
by  participation  therein.'  To  the  Unknown,  Un- 
named, he  feels  an  affinity,  in  that  he  recognizes 
a  '  power  by  which  we  are  joined,  in  a  way  that 
passes  comprehension,  to  the  Unspeakable  and 
Unknowable,  in  that  union  which  is  stronger  than 
any  strength  of  mind  or  intellect  V  And  similarly 
Scotus :  '  In  so  far  as  (man)  partakes  of  divine  and 
heavenly  existence,  he  is  not  animal,  but  through 
his  reason  and  intellect  and  his  thoughts  of  the 
Eternal,  he  shares  in  celestial  being.  ...  In  that 

1  De  Div.  Nom.  i. 
D 


34  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

part  of  him,  then,  is  he  made  in  the  image  of  God, 
with  which  alone  God  holds  converse  in  men  that 
are  worthy  V  And  Maximus 2,  who  in  many  points 
is  to  be  regarded  as  a  mean  term  between  Diony- 
sius  and  Scotus,  says:  'As  the  air  illuminated  by 
the  sun  appears  to  be  nothing  but  light :  not  that 
it  loses  its  own  nature,  but  because  light  prevails 
in  it :  so  human  nature,  joined  to  God,  is  said  in 
all  things  to  be  God  :  not  that  it  ceases  to  be  human 
nature,  but  that  it  receives  a  participation  in 
Divinity  so  that  in  it  God  alone  is  found.' 

Such  participation  can  never  amount  to  the 
vision  of  the  Invisible.  Against  quotations  from 
the  Scriptures  such  as  '  I  saw  the  Lord  seated,'  and 
those  which  describe  Him  as  actuated  by  passions 
and  desires,  Scotus  could  set  other  passages  like : 
'  Who  hath  known  the  mind  of  the  Lord  ?  '  '  Above 
all  that  we  can  ask  or  think.'  '  The  peace  of  God 
which  passeth  all  understanding.'  Even  the  pre- 
diction of  the  beatific  vision  to  be  enjoyed  by 
saints  in  glory  is  not  to  be  taken  literally.  Here 
Scotus  adopts  and  expands  the  doctrine  of  Diony- 
sius  as  to  theophanies  3.  These  are  a  divine  vision, 
vouchsafed  to  privileged  souls,  by  which  every 
revelation  is  made.  All  recorded  visions  of  the 
Most  High  are,  if  real,  to  be  regarded  as  theo- 
phanies, not  as  an  actual  beholding  by  the  eye  or 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iv.  5. 

a  I  here  quote  from  Scotus'  translation,  ibid.  i.  10. 

3  Coel.  Hier.  c.  iv. 


The  Unknown  God  35 

even  by  the  imagination.  As  a  commentator  on 
Dionysius  says,  it  was  the  glory  of  God,  not  God 
Himself,  that  Moses  desired,  and  was  in  part  privi- 
leged to  see.  Maximus  has  represented  theophanies 
as  resulting  from  a  kind  of  deification  of  humanity :  ' 
'  As  high  as  the  human  intelligence  rose  by  love, 
so  low  did  the  Divine  Wisdom  descend  by  mercy.' 
And  here  Scotus  strikes  more  distinctly  the  note 
of  subjectivity  which  marks  all  his  system  by 
making  the  theophany  proportionate  to  the  capacity 
and  the  character  of  each  mind,  whether  angelic  or 
human.  He  interprets  the  saying  '  In  My  Father's 
house  are  many  mansions  '  as  signifying  the  revela- 
tion made  to  each  individual  consciousness.  As 
many  as  are  the  souls  of  the  saints,  so  many  are 
the  divine  theophanies 1. 

It  would  seem  then  that  to  the  individual  con- 
sciousness is  left  the  task  of  deciding  which  of  the 
names  by  which  the  Nameless  One  may  be  denoted 
is  or  is  not  fitting,  though  the  authority  of  holy 
men  may  help  in  the  decision.  To  this  point 
we  shall  recur  when  we  examine  more  closely  the 
subject  of  symbols  and  sacraments.  Here  we  may 
notice  which  are  the  chief  names  of  God  allowed  by 
Dionysius 2.  These  are  Goodness,  Love,  Being, 
Life,  Wisdom,  Reason,  Faith,  Power,  Justice,  Salva- 
tion, Redemption ;  also  to  Him  have  been  applied 
the  adjectives  great,  minute,  same,  other,  like, 
unlike,  stable,  moving,  equal.  More  particularly  : 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  i.  8,  9,  10.  *  De  Div.  Norn.  cc.  5-13. 

D  2 


36  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Almighty,  Ancient  of  Days,  Peace,  Holy  of  Holies, 
God  of  Gods,  Perfect,  and  One.  God  may  be  cele- 
brated as  'cause,  beginning,  being,  the  awakening 
and  setting  up  of  the  fallen,  the  renewal  and  restora- 
tion of  the  declining,  the  assurance  of  waverers, 
the  security  of  the  steadfast,  the  guidance  of  those 
turned  towards  Him,  the  light  of  the  illuminated, 
the  perfection  of  the  initiated,  the  divinity  of  those 
conformed  to  God,  the  simplicity  of  the  simple,  the 
unity  of  those  that  are  made  one  ;  dominion  above 
dominion,  being  of  all  dominion ;  the  gracious 
bestowal,  according  to  fitness,  of  that  which  is 
hidden;  the  Being  of  beings,  the  beginning  and 
cause  of  life  and  being,  through  the  goodness  by 
which  all  things  together  are  fruitful  and  multiply 
and  hold  together  in  One.'  We  may  also  borrow 
the  occasional  expressions  of  prophet  or  seer  as  to 
'  the  arm  of  the  Lord,' '  Thy  throne,'  and  the  like  ; 
and  those  derived  from  the  conception  of  a  ruling 
providence,  as  '  King  of  kings,'  '  Creator,'  and 
others.  In  using  the  name  love,  we  may  take  it  in 
the  sense  either  of  eros  or  of  agape,  for  we  may 
regard  as  divine  both  the  passionate  longing  after 
the  good  and  beautiful,  and  also  that  giving  up  of 
self  into  the  power  of  another,  by  which  the  diverse 
are  made  one,  and  the  faulty  are  drawn  towards 
perfection. 

John  the  Scot,  in  accepting  the  names,  warns 
his  readers  against  interpreting  them  in  a  literal 
sense.  This  may  seem  to  provoke  a  criticism  like 


The  Unknown  God  37 

that  made  by  J.  S.  Mill  against  the  sophistry  and 
immorality  of  a  philosophy  which  attributed  to 
God  names  of  moral  qualities  in  another  sense 
from  that  in  which  we  ascribe  such  qualities  to 
men.  But  the  likeness  between  the  philosophy 
of  Scotus  and  that  which  moved  the  righteous 
indignation  of  the  clearest  and  boldest  of  English 
thinkers  is  only  superficial.  For  to  Scotus  justice 
and  mercy  in  man  were  but  an  offshoot  or  reflection 
of  that  which,  unknown  and  unnamed,  we  may 
call  the  justice  and  mercy  of  God.  If  God  and 
man  do  not  stand  side  by  side,  but  the  lesser 
spiritual  being  is  contained  in  the  greater,  we  can 
have  no  comparison,  and  consequently  no  difference. 
We  are  not  making  God  in  our  image,  with  our 
virtues  and  vices,  but  we  are  looking  at  ourselves 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  idealist  theologian — 
as  made  in  the  image  of  God. 

But  we  must  pass  on  to  inquire  how  this  philo- 
sophy of  an  Unknown  God  can  deal  with  such 
a  subject  as  that  of  the  creation  of  the  world  and 
the  maintenance  of  natural  laws.  Of  course,  in 
a  literal  sense,  God  is  not  Creator.  The  word 
Creator  is  among  the  names  assigned  by  Dionysius 
to  God.  '  We  hold,'  says  Scotus a,  '  that  all  things 
are  from  God,  and  that  they  have  not  been  made 
at  all  but  by  Him,  since  by  Him  and  from  Him 
and  in  Him  are  all  things  made;'  and  again2: 
1  When  we  hear  it  said  that  God  makes  all  things. 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iii.  22.  2  Ibid.  i.  72. 

437401 


38  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

we  ought  to  understand  simply  that  God  is  in  all 
things ;  that  is,  that  He  subsists  as  the  Being  of 
all  things.'  Of  a  creation  in  time  there  can,  of 
course,  be  no  question,  since  time  and  space  can 
never  be  predicated  of  the  Spiritual,  neither  can 
we  regard  the  act  of  creation  as  a  movement  on 
the  part  of  the  Immutable.  For  action  and  being 
are  in  God  identical1.  Nor  yet  can  we  regard 
creation  as  a  making  of  something  out  of  nothing, 
for  everything  has  been  made  from  God  Himself2. 
Creation  is,  if  we  weigh  and  endeavour  to  para- 
phrase the  obscure  and  scattered  utterances  of 
Scotus,  a  self-revelation  of  the  principle  of  all 
things  to  the  intelligence  which  is  itself  divine. 
'  In  the  beginning '  stands  in  the  Vulgate  In 
principio,  and  this  is  taken,  not  by  Scotus  alone, 
but  by  many  of  the  Fathers  acquainted  with  Greek 
philosophy,  as  equivalent  to  in  Verbo,  in  the. 
Eternal  Word.  Creation  is,  in  fact,  the  thinking 
out  of  a  thought,  and  all  that  has  been  written 
on  the  subject  by  canonical  or  uncanonical,  but 
yet  weighty  authorities,  may  be  interpreted  in 
accordance  with  this  conception. 

The  severest  efforts  of  the  Neo-Platonic  philo- 
sophers had  been  devoted  to  the  task  of  forging, 
so  to  speak,  some  kind  of  chain  which  should  reach 
from  the  self-existent  to  the  dependent;  and  the 
Greek  Christian  Fathers  took  up  the  work  till 
several  series  of  emanations,  borrowed  from  various 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  i.  72.  2  Ibid.  ii.  4. 


The  Unknown  God  39 

philosophies  and  religions,  are  found  coexisting  in 
their  theological  systems.  To  us  it  may  seem  as 
if  one  such  series  rendered  the  others  superfluous, 
and  as  if  the  whole  attempt  were  like  that  of  the 
primitive  people  who  piled  brick  on  brick  in 
the  hope  of  building  a  tower  to  reach  the  sky. 
The  result  is  confusing,  yet  the  emanations  had, 
for  the  minds  of  the  highest  thinkers,  their  several 
and  distinct  places  and  functions.  It  was  natural 
that  the  Trinity  of  the  earlier  Neo-Platonists — of 
Being,  Reason,  and  Life — should  be  accepted  by  the 
Alexandrian  theologians1.  It  was  not  unnatural 
that  the  original  Platonic  ideas,  or  prototypes, 
should  be  retained  by  Neo-Platonists  and  Christians 
alike.  It  was  also  quite  consistent  with  this  that 
the  later  Jewish  conception  of  the  angelic  hierarchy 
should  have  been  assimilated  into  the  body  of 
quasi-Christian  teaching  on  superior  beings.  But 
when  we  find  that  the  Tiapa^dy^ara  are  regarded 
both  by  Dionysius  and  by  Scotus  as  more  than 
passive  types,  or  even  formative  reasons — rather 
as  divine  wills 2 — and  by  Scotus  as  the  chief  agents 
in  creation,  the  mediation  of  the  angelic  hierarchy 
seems  a  somewhat  superfluous  hypothesis.  The 
three  hierarchical  orders,  however,  do  not  appear, 

1  For  the  curious  mixture  of  Neo- Platonic  and  Christian  ideas  in 
the  mind  of  an  interesting  and  active  ecclesiastic  of  the  fourth 
century,  I  may  be  allowed  to  refer  to  a  study  I  made  some  years 
ago  of  the  life  and  work  of  Synesius  of  Cyrene,  published  by  the 
S.P.C.K. 

8  De  Div.  Nom.  v.  8  ;  De  Div.  Nat.  ii.  2. 


40  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

in  the  Dionysian  system,  to  have  a  distinctly  creative 
function.  The  work  of  each  triad  is  to  purify,  to 
enlighten,  and  to  make  perfect  the  souls  of  those 
below  it,  and  to  each  of  the  angels  is  assigned 
as  care  one  of  the  nations  of  the  earth.  The  angels 
figure  but  little  in  the  cosmogony  of  John  the 
Scot,  though  he  treats  of  the  angelic  life  as  some- 
thing superior  to  that  of  the  reason,  while  man 
participates  in  both1. 

It  will  have  been  observed  that  most  of  the 
passages  to  which  we  refer  in  order  to  arrive  at 
John  the  Scot's  view  of  creation  come  from  his 
chief  work,  De  Divisione  Naturae.  In  this  treatise, 
which  is  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue  between  a  master 
and  his  pupil,  he  makes  an  investigation  of  all 
things  which  can  be  comprehended  in  the  expression 
nature,  first  dividing  them  into  four  classes,  thus  : 

1.  The  creating,  not  created — equivalent  to  the 
first  principle  of  all  things,  or  God.     The  cause  of 
all  may  be  regarded  as  Being,  Wisdom,  and  Life 2, 
each  of  which  aspects  is  to  be  associated  with  one 
of  the  names  of  the  Trinity. 

2.  The  both  creating  and  created.      These   are 
the   prototypes   or   primordial  causes,  whence   all 
things  come  and  to  which  all  things  must  return. 

3.  The  created,  not  creating.     Under  this  class 
come  all  things  belonging  to  the  sensible  world. 

1  De  Die.  Nat.  iii.  37. 

2  Another   triad   given   is    ovata,   Swa/ws,  wtp-ytia,   or  ffsenfia, 
potestas,  operatio  (De  Dir.  Nat.  i.  63). 


4-  The  neither  creating  nor  created.  This  class 
is,  like  the  first,  comprehensive  of  the  Divine  only, 
but  it  is  here  regarded  under  another  aspect — that 
of  the  non-creating  rest  which  arises  from  the 
return  of  all  things  into  the  primal  unity. 

In  dealing  with  the  third  class  Scotus  follows 
the  narrative  in  Genesis,  interpreting  it,  of  course, 
in  a  figurative  sense  throughout,  as  many  of  the 
Fathers,  whom  he  cites  at  great  length,  had  done 
before  him,  though  his  interpretations  are  often 
his  own.  Thus  the  fiat  lux  means  the  procession 
of  the  primordial  causes  into  form  and  species  such 
as  are  capable  of  recognition  by  the  intelligence  J. 
The  gathering  together  of  land  and  water  is  the 
imparting  of  form  to  unstable  matter.  The  creation 
of  man,  though  placed  last,  has  the  priority  over 
all,  and  is  implied  in  the  fiat  lux,  since  all  things 
are  created  in  man,  who  is  the  image  of  God, 
by  the  identification  of  the  Logos  with  human 
nature. 

But  though  at  first  sight  it  may  seem  that  the 
first  and  fourth  of  the  classes  are  of  divine,  the 
second  and  third  of  other  than  divine  beings, 
Scotus  does  not  hesitate  to  recognize  as  divine  the 
members  of  the  intermediate  classes.  For  if  God 
is  the  beginning,  middle,  and  end  of  all  things, 
those  things  which  are  in  the  middle  are  also  of 
Him.  In  speaking  of  the  primordial  causes,  Scotus 
asserts  that  even  the  highest  angelic  nature  cannot 

1  De  Dir.  Nat.  iii.  25. 


42  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

contemplate  them  except  in  a  theophany,  thereby 
making  them  not  entirely  an  emanation  from  the 
Invisible  One,  but  in  a  sense  still  comprehended 
therein.  And  even  in  the  lower  parts  of  creation 
it  is  God  who  is  ever  beiog  made  afresh.  '  For  the 
Creator,  descending  into  the  furthermost  produc- 
tions, beyond  which  He  creates  nothing,  is  said 
simply  to  be  created,  not  to  create.'  Thus  Abraham 
saw  Him  in  the  motion  of  the  stars,  Moses  in  the 
burning  bush.  The  '  vestments  white  as  snow ' 
which  the  Apostles  beheld  surrounding  their  Lord 
on  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration,  should  signify  to 
us  the  visible  creation  in  which  the  Word  of  God 
is  made  manifest. 

We  see  here  that  the  Unknown  God  of  Scotus 
is  immanent  in  nature,  while,  in  a  sense,  immeasur- 
ably above  nature.  Perhaps  we  ought  in  this 
place  to  consider  the  question,  not  a  very  important 
one  except  for  critics  who  desire  to  affix  a  label 
significative  of  some  particular  school  or  mode 
of  thought  on  every  philosopher,  whether  John  the 
Scot  is  or  is  not  to  be  held  as  a  pantheist1.  The 
connotation  of  the  word  pantheism  varies  very 
considerably  according  as  we  signify  by  it  the 
merging  of  God  in  nature,  or  the  taking  up  of 
nature  into  God ;  or,  to  put  the  matter,  following 
the  principles  of  Scotus,  in  a  subjective  form, 
according  as  our  notion  of  God  becomes  identical 

1  Christlieb  thinks  that  he  was — but  that  he  was  better  than  his 
creed.    The  dispute  seems  rather  an  idle  one. 


A3 

with  our  conception  of  the  world,  or  our  conception 
of  the  world  is  resolved  into  the  thought  of  God. 
At  one  point  of  the  dialogue,  De  Divisione  Naturae, 
the  pupil  becomes  afraid  lest  their  argument  might 
lead  to  an  identification  of  the  world  and  God: 
' "  Then  God  is  all  and  all  is  God !  "  Which  would 
seem  to  be  a  monstrous  doctrine,  even  to  those 
who  are  considered  as  wise  men,  if  they  consider 
the  multiplicity  and  variety  of  things  visible  and 
invisible  ;  for  God  is  one  V  By  saving  the  doctrine 
of  the  one  in  the  manifold,  he  escapes  from  any  form 
of  materialistic  pantheism.  At  the  same  time,  we 
cannot  say  that  he  ascribes  personality  to  God. 
who  is,  in  Dionysian  phrase,  '  more  than  person.' 
Entire  self-consciousness  seems  not  to  be  predicable 
of  Him.  He  does  not  know  Himself  as  this  or 
that,  for  He  is  not  this  or  that.  We  may  say  of 
man  that  he  cannot  entirely  know  himself,  yet 
human  personality  is  not  thereby  denied.  But  the 
subject  of  cognition  will  concern  us  later  on. 

We  have  suggested  and  partly  answered  the 
question  how  Scotus  brought  his  fundamental 
doctrine  of  theology  into  accordance  with  the 
established  belief  of  the  Church  in  his  day.  We 
have  seen  that  he  accepted  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  and  used  it,  in  a  Neo-Platonic  fashion,  in 
his  theory  of  creation.  The  Father  created  all 
things  in  the  Logos,  and  the  work  of  the  Spirit 
is  distributive.  Scotus  also,  after  the  example  of 

1  De  Dii:  Nat.  iii.  10. 


44  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

the  Greek  Fathers1,  connected  that  doctrine  with 
the  psychologic  division  of  the  human  mind  into 
animus,  ratio,  and  sensus2.  He  calls  the  Trinity 
a  reAerapxia  iepoOeaia  3,  and  is  careful,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  avoid  giving  a  literal  and  anthropomorphic 
interpretation  of  the  relations  among  the  divine 
Persons.  In  one  point  he  departs  from  the  ortho- 
doxy of  the  West :  he  declares  that  the  procession 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  is  from  the  Father  through  the 
Son  4.  Yet  he  cannot  differ  so  far  from  authorized 
beliefs  as  does  Dionysius,  who  compares  the  Father 
to  a  stem,  of  which  the  Son  and  the  Spirit  are 
offshoots. 

The  ideas  of  Scotus  on  redemption  and  the  final 
restitution  of  mankind  will  concern  us  hereafter. 
With  the  conception  of  the  incarnation  of  the  Word 
there  goes  in  close  connexion — but  without  con- 
fusion— that  of  the  deification  of  human  nature. 

But  it  were  labour  lost  to  seek  for  traces  of 
orthodoxy  or  heterodoxy  in  the  primary  theological 
principles  of  Scotus.  He  could  cite  the  Scriptures, 
the  Greek  Fathers,  Ambrose.  Augustine,  occasionally 
a  pagan  philosopher,  where  their  words  could  be 
made  to  suit  his  meaning,  and  he  is  able  to  interpret 
almost  any  accepted  doctrine  in  a  fashion  that 

1  According  to  Vacherot,  it  was  Gregory  of  Nyssa  who  fir-i 
struck  out  that  line  of  thought.  The  divisions  are  not  always  the 
same. 

3  De  Die.  Nat.  ii.  24. 

3  In  Com.  on  Coel.  Hifr.  ii. 

4  De  Dir.  Nat.  ii.  32. 


45 

would  fit  it  into  his  system.  Yet  it  would  be 
unfair  to  say  that  he  pretended  to  be  what  he  was 
not,  and  to  pass  as  an  ordinary  Christian  while 
really  owning  no  allegiance  to  any  authority  but 
that  of  human  reason.  In  the  reverent  tone  which 
pervades  all  his  writings,  in  his  pious  ejaculations, 
his  ardent  longing  for  spiritual  knowledge,  his 
gratitude  for  the  beauty  of  nature  and  for  the 
wisdom  of  great  men  of  the  past,  we  see  a  character 
and  disposition  which  belong  to  him  as  Christian 
even  more  than  as  philosopher. 

If  his  ideas  had  been  more  generally  accepted 
than  they  were,  we  should  have  found,  among 
mediaeval  thinkers,  less  anxiety  to  define  the  in- 
definable, more  patient  acquiescence  in  the  limita- 
tions of  human  faculties.  Yet  there  would  have 
been  no  less,  but  rather  more  and  more  enlightened 
reverence  for  that  Unknown  of  whom  we  may  say 
that  He  is,  yet  never  what  He  is  ;  whose  existence 
and  attributes  can  never  be  demonstrated,  but  who 
can  be  found  and  worshipped  in  the  innermost 
shrine  of  the  soul. 


CHAPTER  III 

SCOTUS  AND  THE  PREDESTINATION  CONTROVERSY 

'  Others  apart  sat  on  a  hill  retired, 
In  thoughts  more  elevate,  and  reasoned  high 
Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes  lost.' 

Paradise  Lost,  ii.  557-561. 

IF  ever  there  was  any  human  being  placed  in 
a  manifestly  false  position,  breathing  an  element 
not  his  own,  struggling  with  tasks  at  once  above 
and  below  his  powers,  it  is  the  eclectic  philosopher 
drawn  into  the  meshes  of  theological  controversy. 
Accustomed  to  look  for  truth  on  every  side,  he  has  V 
become  a  partisan,  with  eyes  shut  to  all  that  does 
not  lie  on  the  path  he  has  chosen.  While  fully 
aware  of  the  inadequacy  of  language  to  express  the 
highest  thoughts,  and  of  the  impotency  of  the 
human  mind  to  solve  the  problems  which  it  persists 
in  attempting,  he  finds  himself  convicting  of  error 
those  whose  words  'might  be  made  to  bear  a  meaning 


Scotus  and  Predestination  47 

in  which  he  would  fully  concur,  and  to  condemn 
as  wickedness  a  confusion  due  to  human  weakness. 
Whereas  he  can  only  think  profitably  in  an  atmo- 
sphere of  peace  and  calm,  he  has  descended  into  the 
arena  full  of  dust  and  of  shoutings.  The  disputa- 
tious tone  he  assumes  is  likely  to  be  more  harmful 
to  him  than  to  another,  because  his  clearer  vision 
carries  with  it  an  obligation  to  wider  charity. 
The  energy  which  he  should  employ  in  constructive 
work  is  expended  in  efforts  which,  to  him  at  least, 
are  superfluous.  For  the  most  permanent  and  ever- 
pressing  questions  argued  by  theologians  in  all  ages 
wear  a  different  aspect  to  him  and  to  those  whose 
life  is  not  primarily  one  of  thought.  Religious 
mysteries  he  will  reverently  acknowledge,  but 
religious  puzzles  are,  for  him,  meaningless.  Such 
puzzles  as  disturb  the  mind  of  every  intelligent 
child  to  whom  religious  ideas  are  communicated, 
and  of  every  plain  man  who  has  some  religious 
belief,  are  due  in  almost  all  cases  to  an  anthro- 
morphic  view  of  Deity  or  to  a  materialistic  view  of 
humanity,  and  from  both  these  sources  of  confusion 
the  cultivated  thinker — not  always  the  bold  specu- 
lator of  a  primitive  culture — is  comparatively  free. 
Thus,  in  the  case  before  us,  there  was  no  reason  why 
Scotus  should  have  associated  himself  intimately 
with  those  who,  in  his  day,  were  busying  themselves 
with  dreary  arguments  on  the  subject  of  Predesti- 
nation and  on  that  of  the  Sacraments.  Nay,  when 
he  did  take  up  these  questions,  he  found  it  im- 


48  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

possible  to  disguise  from  his  fellow-combatants  the 
fact  that  he  was  not  fighting  on  their  level.  The 
curious  result,  both  in  the  impression  he  produced, 
and  in  the  transformation  which  the  contested 
matters  underwent  in  his  hands,  lends  a  peculiar 
and  human  interest  to  what  might  seem  a  dull, 
interminable  war  of  words,  waged  with  a  perverted 
faith,  an  unjustified  hope,  and  a  conspicuous  absence 
of  charity. 

The  forerunners  of  Scotus  had,  in  some  cases, 
seen  that  controversy  was  not  their  forte.  One 
letter  of  Dionysius1  contains  admonitions  which 
his  disciple  might  have  followed  with  advantage  to 
his  reputation :  '  Do  not  esteem  it  a  victory,  my 
revered  friend,  to  have  poured  scorn  upon  a  religious 
practice  or  a  belief  that  displeases  you.  For  your 
confutation,  however  logical,  does  not  prove  you  to 
be  in  the  right.  It  is  possible  that  both  you  and 
other  people,  amid  so  much  that  is  false  or  only 
apparent,  may  fail  to  discern  the  truth  which  is  one 
and  secret.  If  anything  is  not  red,  it  is  not 
necessarily  white ;  if  a  creature  is  not  a  horse,  it 
need  not  be  a  man.  If  you  follow  my  advice,  this 
will  be  your  line  of  action  :  to  cease  from  reviling 
others,  but  to  speak  for  the  truth  in  such  fashion 
that  what  you  say  can  never  be  refuted.' 

In  general,  John's  exposition  of  the  truths  that 
he  had  grasped  was  of  this  positive  kind.  But, 
like  other  Neo-Platonic  philosophers  both  Pagan 

1  The  sixth — to  Sosipater. 


Scotus  and  Predestination  49 

and  Christian — like  Porphyry,  Julian,  Origen — he 
was  forced,  on  at  least  this  one  occasion,  to  abandon 
his  usual  course.  Instead  of  keeping  to  his  argu- 
ments, with  an  occasional  side-thrust  at  his  opponents, 
he  directs  his  discourse  at  the  head  of  his  victim, 
leaving  suggestions  of  positive  doctrine  to  be  ga- 
thered by  the  way.  The  occasion  was  given  by  the 
request  of  Hincmar,  Archbishop  of  Rheims,  that  he 
would  write  a  refutation  of  the  theory  of  the  monk 
Gottschalk,  on  what  was  called  the  theory  of  '  dual ' 
(gemina)  predestination. 

Hincmar  of  Rheims  was  one  of  the  most  notable 
men  of  the  century  1.  He  held  the  metropolitan 
see  of  Rheims,  after  a  stormy  interregnum,  from 
844  to  882,  during  a  period  when  Church  and  State 
alike  were  in  a  condition  of  distraction  approaching 
to  anarchy.  Church  property  had  been  appropriated 
right  and  left ;  bishops  of  doubtful  pretensions  had, 
by  performing  sacerdotal  acts  of  uncertain  validity, 
given  occasion  for  strifes  and  schisms  among  clergy 
and  laity ;  the  divisions  of  the  Empire  had  yet 
further  complicated  the  relations  of  the  higher 
bishops  under  whose  control  lay  districts  which, 

1  There  are  various  lives  of  Hincmar,  and  his  works  are  in 
Migne's  Patrologia.  Noorden's  Life  (Bonn,  1863)  is  full,  clear,  and 
impartial.  A  good  many  of  the  documents  relating  to  the  Gott- 
schalk controversy  are  to  be  found  in  Migne  ;  the  two  Confessions 
of  Gottschalk  also  in  the  works  of  Archbishop  Ussher.  A  very 
extensive  collection  was  made  by  the  Jansenist  Mauguin,  who 
naturally  felt  attracted  to  Gottschalk's  side  of  the  question.  There 
is  much  definite  information  in  Hefele's  Conciliengeschichte. 

E 


5o  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

in  secular  matters,  were  subject  to  independent 
sovereigns,  frequently  at  war  one  with  another ; 
finally,  the  papacy,  in  the  person  of  Nicolas  I 
(858-867),  was  putting  forth  claims  as  to  jurisdic- 
tion and  control  wider  and  more  definite  than 
had  been  announced  before,  for  which  justification 
was  found  in  the  pseudo-Isidorian  decretals,  which 
probably  originated  with  Hincmar's  predecessor  at 
Eheims,  the  dispossessed  Archbishop  Ebo1.  The 
policy  of  Hincmar  was  bold,  definite,  and  on  the 
whole,  if  not  altogether  scrupulous,  fairly  con- 
sistent. He  seems  to  have  been  throughout  loyal 
to  the  cause  of  the  West  Frankish  kings — more 
faithful  to  them,  certainly,  than  they  proved  to 
him.  In  his  insistence  on  the  rights  of  the  Gallican 
Church  against  papal  claims,  he  has  been  regarded 
as  the  forerunner  of  Bossuet.  He  is  found  on  the 
side  of  order  and  discipline  among  the  clergy,  and 
is  not  afraid  of  asserting  a  moral  censorship  over 
the  highest  ranks  of  the  laity.  Here,  however,  we 
are  concerned  with  him  in  a  character  which  was 
not  the  most  favourable  to  the  display  of  his 
greatest  qualities — as  maintainer  of  one  of  the 
most  conspicuous  theological  controversies  of  his 
time. 

The  great  paradox  of  foreknowledge  and  free- 
will has  led  to  disputes  of  different  character 

1  The  part  probably  taken  by  Ebo  in  the  drawing  up  of  the 
forgeries  is  discussed  at  length  by  Noorden  in  his  Hincmar  Erz- 
lischofvon  Sheims,  chap.  i. 


Scotus  and  Predestination  51 

according  to  the  dogmatic  or  the  speculative 
tendencies  prevalent  at  different  ages.  Some  of 
the  cycle  of  questions,  if  we  may  so  call  them, 
which  revolve  around  it  are  philosophical,  and  have 
no  connexion  with  either  theology  or  religion. 
Such  is  the  problem  of  moral  and  responsible 
human  action  in  a  determining  environment,  which 
writers  on  ethics  generally  feel  bound  to  meet ;  and 
such,  again,  is  the  coexistence  of  a  uniformity  of 
sequence  in  nature  with  apparently  arbitrary  acts 
on  the  part  of  individual  living  creatures.  Other 
questions  are  suggested  by  a  theistic  but  not  neces- 
sarily a  Christian  view  of  life.  Such  are  the 
difficulties  which  men  have  ever  experienced  in 
a  world  full  of  wrongdoing,  and  of  merited  or 
unmerited  suffering,  when  they  try  to  reconcile 
the  three  attributes  they  must  needs  ascribe  to  the 
Deity  of  omnipotence,  foreknowledge,  and  good- 
will. To  Christians,  again,  belongs  the  task  of 
inquiring  into  the  very  bases  of  their  faith  and 
practice.  For — as  the  history  of  this  controversy 
in  the  ninth  century  shows — the  strictest  interpre- 
tation of  the  doctrine  of  predestination  precluded 
the  belief  that  Christ  died  for  all,  or  that  moral 
living  and  the  use  of  the  Sacraments  are  of  any 
effect.  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  connexion 
of  the  whole  question  with  that  of  the  efficacy  of 
the  Sacraments  was  the  main  cause  of  the  intense 
interest  taken  in  it  by  the  higher  clergy  of  our 
period,  who  were  not,  as  a  rule,  men  of  great 
E  2 


52  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

philosophical  or  theological  acumen,  but  who  felt 
it  incumbent  on  them  to  keep  the  ecclesiastical 
system  free  from  assaults,  either  of  erratic  indivi- 
dualism in  doctrine  or  of  license  in  action. 

The  controversy  with  which  we  have  to  deal 
was  almost  entirely  confined  to  the  religious 
aspects  of  the  question.  It  is,  perhaps,  not  a 
singular  feature  in  it  that  both  sides  claimed  to 
derive  their  chief  support,  after  the  Scriptures, 
from  the  writings  of  Augustine.  Yet  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  the  really  Augustinian  spirit 
prevailed  in  the  opponents,  not  in  the  allies,  of 
Hincmar.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  it  is  mainly 
to  the  labours  of  a  great  Jansenist a  that  we  owe 
the  greatest  collection  of  documents  bearing  on  the 
controversy,  since  Jansenists,  as  well  as  Lutherans 
and  Calvinists,  drew  their  inspiration  from  the 
same  church  Father  whose  doctrine,  in  its  most 
uncompromising  form,  was  confidently  appealed 
to  by  Gottschalk  when  he  expounded  his  theory 
of  double  predestination. 

It  is  almost  superfluous  to  state  that  a  mediaeval 
controversialist  did  not  regard  it  as  part  of  his 
duty  to  make  himself  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
his  opponent's  meaning,  or  to  realize  all  the  bear- 
ings of  the  opposite  point  of  view.  Attack  and 
defence  are  alike  partial,  or  rather  defence  is  often 

1  Gilbert  Mauguin,  who  wrote  about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  On  the  Jesuit  side  is  the  great  compilation  of  Pere 
Cellot. 


Scotus  and  Predestination  53 

little  more  than  a  series  of  isolated  counter-attacks. 
The  result  of  this  method — or  no-method — is  to 
make  it  almost  impossible  to  comprehend  the  views 
of  any  party,  especially  when  the  principal  works 
of  the  heretic  have  been  safely  committed  to  the 
flames.  In  this  case  there  is  the  additional  diffi- 
culty that  when  either  party  feels  a  distant  sus- 
picion that  he  is  going  against  St.  Augustine  or 
certain  current  phrases  of  Scripture,  he  begins  to 
eat  his  own  words  and  to  utter  palpable  incon- 
sistencies. He  may  be  too  dull  to  see  that  he  is 
inconsistent,  yet  it  is  easy  enough  for  his  adversary 
to  show  that  sortie  of  his  statements  tend  to  subvert 
all  morals  and  all  disinterested — or  even  inter- 
ested— observance  of  religion.  If  the  question  is 
put  in  the  form  it  generally,  at  that  crisis,  assumed : 
'  Does  God  predestinate  both  to  evil  and  to  good  ? ' 
the  ordinary  critical  reader  of  St.  Augustine  would 
be  forced  to  set  the  authority  of  that  Father  on 
the  affirmative  side,  though  he  would  acknowledge 
that  in  many  passages  Augustine  repudiates  the 
notion  of  a  divine  incitement  to  evil  or  of  a  neces- 
sity which  the  human  will  cannot  escape.  The 
point  on  which  the  whole  controversy  turns  seems 
to  be  the  identity  or  heterogeneity  of  foreknowledge 
and  predestination;  and  it  is  just  on  this  point  that 
most  of  the  controversialists,  Scotus  himself  in- 
cluded, seem  to  contradict  themselves.  If  we  could 
venture,  without  seeming  unfair,  to  ascribe  to  each 
party  a  maxim  which  nobody  frankly  adopted,  we 


54  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

might  divide  the  attempts  to  answer  the  question 
into  three  types,  each  representing,  in  general,  the 
kind  of  opinion  maintained  respectively  by  Gott- 
schalk,  by  Hincmar  and  his  adherents,  and  by 
Scotus  and  his  philosophic  friends. 

The  first  view  is  that  foreknowledge  and  pre- 
destination are  practically  coextensive  in  appli- 
cation, and  that  as  divine  wisdom  foreknows  both 
good  and  evil,  so  divine  power,  from  the  beginning 
of  things,  apportions  what  is  good  to  the  elect, 
what  is  evil  to  the  non-elect. 

The  second  view  is  that  foreknowledge  and  pre- 
destination are  quite  different  in  meaning  and  in 
sphere  of  operation.  God  foreknows  good  and  evil 
alike,  but  He  predestinates  what  is  good  only. 

The  third  view  is  that,  since  we  are  compelled 
to  associate  in  the  closest  connexion  our  idea  of 
divine  wisdom  and  that  of  divine  power,  we  cannot, 
except  figuratively  and  for  purposes  of  convenience, 
separate  the  whole  scope  of  foreknowledge  from 
that  of  predestination.  But  that  nevertheless  God 
does  not  predestinate  evil,  for  He  does  not  even 
know  or  foreknow  it,  since  it  has  no  real  being. 
One  cannot  think  of  even  omniscience  as  knowing  ]/ 
the  non-existent. 

A  more  or  less  enlightened  view  is  taken  by  the 
upholders  of  any  of  these  theories  according  as 
they  are  able  or  unable  to  grasp — as  Augustine 
certainly  did — the  relativity  of  all  notions  of  time, 
and  to  consider — as  apparently  Gottschalk  could 


Scotus  and  Predestination  55 

not — that  the  futurity  of  the  knowledge  was  not 
an  essential  element  in  the  problem.  Again,  the 
identification,  in  the  highest  existence,  of  con- 
sciousness and  activity,  was  a  Neo-Platonic  concep- 
tion l  which  did  not  commend  itself  to  an  untrained 
Western  mind.  But  perhaps,  though  our  object  is 
not  to  go  further  into  the  question  than  is  necessary 
to  illustrate  the  attitude  of  Scotus  to  the  men  and 
the  thought  of  his  time,  a  brief  chronological 
survey  of  the  most  decisive  moments  in  the  con- 
troversy may  be  conducive  to  a  clearer  appre- 
hension of  our  general  bearings. 

Gottschalk  was  the  son  of  a  Saxon  nobleman, 
and  being  early  intended  for  a  clerical  life,  was 
sent  in  childhood  to  the  monastery  of  Fulda,  where 
he  was  instructed  in  theological  learning,  and  in 
due  time  received  the  tonsure.  It  may  seem  sur- 
prising that  this  man,  who  was  accused  afterwards 
of  proclaiming  doctrines  inconsistent  with  free-will, 
first  made  himself  conspicuous  by  protesting  against 
the  binding  character  of  the  vows  which  had  been 
forced  upon  him  apart  from  his  own  will.  He 
succeeded  in  bringing  his  complaints  before  a  synod 
held  at  Mentz  in  the  year  829,  and  obtained  the 
desired  release.  This  proceeding  was,  however, 
very  obnoxious  to  the  recently  appointed  abbot 
of  Fulda,  Rabanus  Maurus,  a  man  of  great  repu- 
tation for  learning  and  for  strength  of  will.  It  is 
not  clear  how  an  able  superior  should  fail  to  see 

1  See  it  especially  in  Julian,  Oration  IV,  142,  D. 


56  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

the  bad  policy  of  retaining  in  the  monastery  a  man 
to  whom  the  clerical  profession  was  distasteful ; 
nor  how  it  came  about  that  Gottschalk,  who,  what- 
ever he  was,  seems  assuredly  to  have  been  no  man 
of  the  world,  should  feel  so  impatient  of  a  life 
which,  better  than  any  other,  allowed  scope  for 
the  exercise  of  such  literary  and  argumentative 
tastes  and  high-strung  religious  sensibilities  as  he 
undoubtedly  possessed.  The  fact  is  undoubted, 
however,  that  Rabanus  applied  to  the  Emperor 
Lewis  the  Pious  for  a  revision  of  the  sentence  of 
the  synod,  and  secured  a  decision  confirming  the 
validity  of  Gottschalk's  vows.  It  was  not  the  first 
time  that  this  question  as  to  the  possibility  of 
a  parent's  devoting  his  child  to  the  service  of 
God  had  been  argued  before  a  provincial  synod 
and  authoritatively  affirmed.  Gottschalk  was,  of 
course,  obliged  to  submit.  He  soon  afterwards 
removed  to  Orbais,  in  the  diocese  of  Soissons  and 
the  province  of  Rheims,  and  consoled  himself  for 
his  disappointment  by  plunging  deep  into  patristic 
lore.  Augustine,  Fulgentius,  and  Isidore  seem  to 
have  been  his  favourite  authors,  and  from  their 
writings  he  derived  the  material  for  his  theory  of 
predestination.  He  showed  no  reticence  in  pro- 
claiming his  views  as  soon  as  he  had  reached  them, 
and  by  his  intellectual  activity  and  powers  of  per- 
suasion seems  to  have  gathered  round  him  a  small 
body  of  admiring  friends. 

The  next  step  by  which  Gottschalk  incurred  still 


Scotus  and  Predestination  57 

more  disapproval  in  high  quarters 1  was  the  accep- 
tance of  priest's  orders,  apparently  without  the 
sanction  of  his  superior,  at  the  hands  of  the  chor- 
episcopus  of  Rheims,  Richhold.  The  chorepiscopi 
were  an  inferior  rank  of  non-localized  bishops, 
whose  functions  some  of  the  higher  prelates,  notably 
Hincmar,  were  endeavouring  to  curtail.  The 
normal  course  would  have  been  for  Gottschalk  to 
seek  ordination  from  Rothade,  Bishop  of  Soissons, 
but  for  reasons  that  we  cannot  now  discover — 
certainly  not  from  any  evident  devotion  on  the 
part  of  Rothade  to  the  ideas  of  Hincmar — he  pre- 
ferred to  take  a  different  line  of  action.  His  object 
in  seeking  ordination  seems  to  have  been  a  desire 
to  obtain  the  use  of  pulpits  whence  to  proclaim  his 
views,  since  we  find  his  activity  as  a  preacher 
mentioned  in  connexion  with  his  journeys.  He 
had  long  been  an  eager  correspondent  of  some  of 
the  most  learned  churchmen  of  the  time,  especially 
with  Servatus  Lupus,  who  was  later  involved  in 
the  controversy,  and  who  was  ready  to  warn  him 
when  he  saw  that  he  was  going  beyond  his  depth  2. 

1  Hincmar  (De  Praedestinatione  Dissertatio  Posterior,  cap.  ii), 
in   narrating  Gottschalk's  subsequent    degradation,  says :  '  honore 
presbyteriali  quern  per  Righoldum  Rhenorum  chorepiscopum,  cum 
esset  Suessoniciae  parochiae  monachus,  inscio  civitatis  suae  episcopo, 
usurpaverat    potius    quam    acceperat,   abiectus.'     It   seems  to  be 
generally   supposed    that    the    ordination   took   place   during   the 
vacancy  in  the  episcopate  of  Rheims,  during  which  the  chorepiscopi 
exercised  administrative  functions,  and  which  ended  with  the  appoint- 
ment of  Hincmar  in  845. 

2  We  find  letters  from  Lupus  to  Gottschalk  in  Migne's  Patro- 


58  Studies  in  Jo/in  the  Scot 

He  made  a  journey,  possibly  two  journeys1,  into 
Italy,  and  it  was  on  his  return  from  his  travels, 
which  he  had  undertaken  without  asking  the  leave 
of  his  superior,  that  his  new  troubles  began.  He 
enjoyed  for  a  time  the  hospitality,  at  Friuli,  of 
Count  Eberhard,  and  seems  to  have  had  oppor-  , 
tunities  of  spreading  his  opinions  in  these  regions. 
One  of  those  who  heard  them  with  inward  oppo- 
sition was  Noting,  Bishop  designate  of  Verona, 
who  shortly  afterwards  happened  to  meet  Gott- 
schalk's  early  opponent,  Rabanus  Maurus,  and 
arranged  with  him  a  plan  of  campaign.  Rabanus 
wrote  a  little  treatise  to  Noting,  and  another  to 
Count  Eberhard,  neither  of  them,  of  course,  designed 
solely  for  the  perusal  of  those  to  whom  they  were 
addressed.  In  part,  his  arguments  are  those  of  the 
plain  man,  who  sees  in  the  doctrine  of  predestina- 
tion to  evil,  as  well  as  to  good,  an  effectual  check 
to  all  human  efforts  in  the  direction  of  a  moral 
life ;  in  part,  those  of  a  subtle  theologian  who 
would  mark  out  the  distinctions  between  prescience 
and  predestination,  and  would  discern  a  radical 
difference  between  the  assertions  that  punishment 
had  been  preordained  to  man  and  that  man  had 
been  preordained  to  punishment. 

Unfortunately  for  Gottschalk  and  for  the  peace 

logia.     In  Ep.  XXX  there  is  a  warning  against  superfluous  subtlety 
in  speculation. 

1  See  Van  Noorden's  arguments  as  to  what  happened  during  the 
first  and  second  journey  :  ii.  56  et  seq. 


Scotus  and  Predestination  59 

of  the  Church,  Rabanus  did  not  rest  content  with 
verbal  refutation.  He  had  lately  been  raised  to 
the  important  see  of  Mentz,  and  there,  in  the  year 
848,  he  presided  over  a  synod  of  bishops — chiefly 
from  the  kingdom  of  Lewis  the  German,  though 
there  seem  to  have  been  some  Lorrainers  among 
them — before  whom  Gottschalk  had  to  appear. 
Unabashed  by  the  rebuffs  he  had  received  in  Italy, 
whence,  according  to  his  opponents,  he  had  been 
driven  with  shame,  the  accused  monk  appeared 
and  presented  a  confession  of  faith.  We  have  it 
as  reported  by  Hincmar,  but  it  probably  represents, 
without  any  qualifications,  the  views  that  Gott- 
schalk proclaimed,  or  at  least  those  which  he  led 
his  followers  to  adopt :  '  I,  Gottschalk,  believe 
and  confess,  profess,  and  testify  in  the  name  of 
(ex]  God  the  Father,  by  God  the  Son,  in  God  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  affirm  and  approve  in  the  presence 
of  God  and  His  Saints,  that  predestination  is  tu-o- 
fold,  both  of  the  elect  to  bliss  and  of  the  reprobate 
to  death;  that  as  God,  who  changes  not,  before 
the  foundation  of  the  world  by  His  gratuitous 
grace  predestinated  His  elect  unchangeably  to  life 
eternal,  in  entirely  like  manner  the  same  un- 
changing God  predestinated  by  just  judgement 
to  eternal  death,  according  to  their  merit,  all  the 
reprobate  who  in  the  Day  of  Judgement  are  to  be 
condemned  on  account  of  their  own  evil  deeds.' 
Besides  stating  his  own  belief  and  refusing  to  sur- 
render it,  Gottschalk  seems  to  have  gone  so  far  as  to 


60  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

bring  a  countercharge  of  heresy  against  his  learned 
and  famous  superior  and  judge,  Eabanus  himself. 
His  condemnation  followed,  as  might  have  been 
expected,  and  he  was  sent  back  into  the  diocese  of 
Hincmar,towhom  at  the  same  time  a  letter  was  writ- 
ten byRabanus,  setting  forth  the  dangerous  character 
of  Gottschalk's  doctrine  and  behaviour,  and  com- 
manding in  the  name  of  the  synod  and  of  King 
Lewis,  that  means  be  taken  to  keep  the  mischief 
from  growing.  The  result  of  this  was  that  at 
a  Council  held  at  Chiersey  in  the  course  of  the 
next  year,  Gottschalk  was  again  charged  with 
his  heresies  and  irregularities,  severely  scourged — 
without  thereby  being  brought  to  a  better  mind — 
and  forced  to  throw  into  the  fire  that  treatise 
setting  forth  his  notions  which  the  historians  of 
the  controversy  would  now  be  exceedingly  glad 
to  possess.  He  was  subsequently  sent  into  strict 
custody  under  the  care  of  the  Abbot  of  Haut- 
villiers,  since  Hincmar  did  not  feel  sufficient  con- 
fidence in  Rothade,  Bishop  of  Soissons,  to  entrust 
Gottschalk  to  his  episcopal  supervision — as  he 
would  have  had  to  do  if  Gottschalk  had  been 
sent  back  to  Orbais.  At  first  Gottschalk  was 
treated  with  comparative  lenity.  He  was  ad- 
mitted to  communion  at  Easter,  and  allowed  to 
correspond  with  his  friends.  Efforts  were  made  to 
induce  him  to  renounce  his  opinions,  but  without 
success. 

During  the  earlier  part  of  his  captivity,  Gott- 


Scotus  and  Predestination  61 

schalk  drew  up  two  confessions  of  faith  l.  These 
are  practically  all,  with  the  exception  of  some 
slight  poetical  works,  that  we  have  straight  from 
his  hand ;  and  whatever  their  logical  consequences 
may  be,  they  do  not  lay  him  open  to  all  the 
charges  of  his  opponents.  In  the  first  and  shorter 
document,  he  endeavours  to  support  the  doctrine 
that  some  men  are  predestined  to  salvation  and 
others  to  damnation  by  citations  of  St.  Augustine 
and  Pope  Gregory  the  Great.  He  borrows  the- 
term  '  gemina  praedestinatio '  from  St.  Isidore  of 
Seville.  But  there  is  no  trace  of  a  necessity  which 
binds  even  the  divine  activity  nor  yet  of  predestina- 
tion to  sin.  The  larger  confession  is  in  the  form 
of  a  prayer — not  very  conducive  to  clearness  of 
argument  and  calmness  of  tone  2.  The  main 
idea  seems  to  be :  that  only  what  is  good  is 
predestinated,  but  that  the  good  may  take  the 
form  of  benefits  or  of  judgements — a  doctrine 
which  may  safely  be  regarded  as  Augustinian. 
Furthermore,  he  considers  that  if  the  reprobate 
were  not  predestined  to  damnation,  even  before 
their  periods  of  probation  were  over,  the  divine 
intention  concerning  them  would  be  convicted  of 
mutability.  There  is  something  hysterical  and 
declamatory  about  the  whole  piece,  which  culmin- 

1  These  have  been  reprinted  in  Migne,  and  are  also,  as  stated  above, 
to  be  found  in  Archbishop  Ussher. 

2  We  have  curious  expressions  such  as  '  lam  tempus  est,  Domine, 
veridica  divinorum  subiici  testimonia  libroruin,'  &c. 


62  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

ates  in  the  eager  desire  expressed  to  test  his 
professions  by  the  fourfold  ordeal  of  boiling  water, 
oil,  pitch,  and  fire. 

Before  continuing  this  word-war,  which  was 
being  transferred  to  wider  fields,  we  may  in  a  few 
words  dismiss  the  unhappy  beginner  of  the  fray. 
He  not  only  resisted  all  attempts  to  make  him 
recant,  but  brought  a  curious  countercharge  against 
Archbishop  Hincmar.  This  prelate  had  lately 
changed  the  words  of  a  hymn,  substituting  '  summa 
deitas '  for  *  trina  deitas.'  Gottschalk  accordingly 
accused  Hincmar  of  Sabellianism.  His  mind 
was  probably  brooding  on  the  '  gemina  praedesti- 
natio,'  and  as  he  and  his  friends  denied  that  the 
phrase  implied  two  predestinations,  they  might 
equally  well  assert  that  'trina  deitas'  was  not 
tritheistic,  but  strictly  orthodox.  Of  course  Hinc- 
mar was  equal  to  the  task  of  defending  himself. 
Meantime  he  had  composed  a  form  of  faith  to 
which  Gottschalk  was  to  subscribe  on  pain  of 
exclusion  from  all  the  sacraments.  Gottschalk 
refused  it,  and  died,  an  excommunicated  captive, 
in  868  or  869. 

Meantime,  others  had  taken  up  his  cause,  or 
at  least  the  defence  of  some  of  his  expressions. 
Prudentius,  Bishop  of  Troyes,  wrote  a  long  epistle 
to  Hincmar  and  his  adherent  and  suffragan, 
Pardulus,  Bishop  of  Laon,  in  which  he  pointed  out 
the  inconsistency  of  holding  that  God  desires  the 
salvation  of  all  men,  that  God  is  almighty,  and 


Scotus  and  Predestination  63 

that  not  all  men  are  saved.  Servatus  Lupus,  the 
quondam  friend  and  mentor  of  Gottsclialk,  wrote 
a  letter  to  King  Charles  the  Bald,  in  which  he 
pointed  out  the  inapplicability  of  time-duration 
to  the  conception  of  divine  knowledge.  Ratramus, 
the  learned  monk,  in  an  '  epistola  ad  amicum/ 
justified  the  '  gemina  praedestinatio,'  and  dwelt  on 
the  inseparability  in  the  divine  nature  of  thought 
and  action.  Hincmar  and  Pardulus  looked  abroad 
for  partisans.  Among  others,  they  thought  of 
John  the  Scot. 

Two  reasons  may  be  assigned  for  the  request  of 
Hincmar  to  Scotus  that  he  should  write  something 
against  Gottschalk.  In  the  first  place,  he  was 
anxious  to  have  Charles  the  Bald  on  his  side,  and 
Scotus  was  known  to  stand  high  in  the  king's 
favour.  At  the  same  time  he  may  have  known  of 
John's  studies  in  Dionysius  through  Hildwin,  of 
St.  Denys,  under  whose  patronage  he  had  made 
the  earliest  steps  in  his  career,  and  who  had,  as 
we  have  seen,  done  some  work  on  the  same  subject. 
Hincmar  doubtless  knew  of  John  as  an  acute 
dialectician,  and  possibly  as  a  liberal  thinker 
above  the  limitations  of  a  fanatic  like  Gottschalk. 
It  is  evident  from  the  sequel  that  he  had  very 
little  notion  of  what  John's  philosophical  views 
really  were.  As  to  Scotus,  he  expressed  pleasure 
at  being  asked  to  write  in  defence  of  catholic 
doctrine,  and  tried — vainly  enough — to  ward  off 
possible  misunderstandings. 


64  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

The  treatise  of  Scotus,  De  Praedestinatiorte,  is 
not  really  a  confutation  of  Gottschalk,  with  whose 
views  he  seems  to  have  been  very  imperfectly 
acquainted.  If  it  is  said  that  he  was  nevertheless 
right  in  attacking  the  immoral  and  impious  con- 
sequences that  naturally  flowed  from  Gottschalk's 
opinions,  we  must  allow  that,  in  dealing  with  these 
high  subjects,  the  most  virtuous  and  reverent 
of  men  have  often  laid  down  principles  which  the 
dullest  mediocrity  would  shrink  to  apply  in 
practice.  Scotus  himself  fences  and  garbles,  and 
shows  himself  no  better  than  an  ordinary  con- 
troversialist, while  his  pen  is  dipped  in  gall,  more, 
we  may  well  believe,  from  fashion  than  from 
feeling.  Nevertheless,  he  certainly  brought  new 
elements  into  the  discussion. 

Scotus  begins  his  treatise,  De  Divina  Praedesti- 
natione, by  insisting  on  the  use  of  the  dialectic 
methods  of  philosophy  (8iaiperiK^,  opicmK-q,  a7ro5ei/c- 
riKTj,  and  di-aAuriKTj)  in  confuting  heretics.  He  goes  on 
to  argue  against  the  doctrine  of  two  predestinations, 
which  he  seems  to  regard  as  involving  the  eleva- 
tion of  necessity  into  a  force  controlling  even  the 
action  of  God.  He  distinguishes  between  prescience 
and  predestination,  not  exactly  according  to  the 
Augustinian  line  of  thought,  but  from  his  own 
subjective  point  of  view.  Though  the  being  of 
God  is  simple,  the  human  mind  can  only  consider 
it  in  multiform  fashion,  distinguishing  wisdom, 
knowledge,  activity,  and  the  like.  Yet  each  of 


Scotus  and  Predestination  65 

these  is  one,  and  predestination  is  one — a  '  divine 
name,'  as  Dionysius  would  have  said.  There  is  no 
necessity  above  God,  therefore  what  is  true  of  the 
divine  will  is  true  of  predestination.  Now  what 
is  good  cannot  be  the  cause  of  evil,  nor  can  the 
sum  of  all  being  be  the  cause  of  what  is  destruc- 
tive of  being — sin,  misery,  and  death.  The  term 
'  gemina '  must  imply  partition ;  and  since  divine 
predestination  is  the  indivisible  being  of  God, 
contemplated  in  a  particular  aspect,  it  cannot 
possibly  be  divided  into  parts. 

Scotus  goes  on  to  accuse  Gottschalk  of  combin- 
ing Pelagianism  with  the  opposite  heresy.  Pela- 
gianism  exalts  free-will  so  as  to  leave  no  scope 
for  grace.  The  opposite  heresy  denies  free-will 
altogether.  Gottschalk  allows  no  room  either  for 
grace  or  for  free-will.  But  man  has  free-will  as 
part  of  his  nature,  whereby  he  is  made  in  the 
image  of  God.  He  has  not  lost  it  by  his  lapse  into 
sin.  The  gift  of  God,  which  comes  from  the  divine 
bounty  and  may  be  withdrawn,  is  the  motion  by 
which  the  human  will  turns  to  the  divine.  Free- 
will, though  a  great  good,  is  capable  of  abuse.  It 
errs  when  it  turns  to  itself,  to  the  outward,  and  the 
lower,  rather  than  to  God,  to  the  inward,  and 
the  higher.  This  motion  to  evil  is  not  of  God.  It 
has  no  real  cause  or  existence,  as  Augustine  him- 
self, in  his  treatise,  De  Libero  Arbitrio,  clearly 
states.  The  perverted  motion  belongs  to  the  will, 
and  to  it  alone.  All  sin  is  from  free-will.  Of 

F 


66  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

course  Scotus  is  able  to  see  that  he  has  only 
pushed  the  difficulty  a  step  or  two  further  back, 
since  men  will  always  ask :  Why  was  human  nature 
made  capable  of  falling1?  He  can  only  give  the 
well-worn  answer  that  without  possibility  of  falling 
there  could  be  no  free-will,  and  without  free-will 
no  honourable  and  reasonable  service. 

It  is  quite  impossible  for  the  casual  reader  of 
St.  Augustine  to  resist  the  impression  that  many 
passages  in  that  Father  do  distinctly  assert 
predestination  to  misery,  and  that  some  of  the 
harshest  features  in  the  doctrine  of  predestination, 
such  as  the  damnation  of  non-elect  infants,  from 
which  alike  the  Greek  and  the  modern  mind  have  re- 
coiled, are  to  be  found  in  his  writings.  Scotus  has 
to  explain  away  statements  that  seem  to  represent 
man  as  having  lost  free-will  by  his  fall,  and  others 
that  would  bring  evil  within  the  range  of  pre- 
destination. In  the  latter  case,  he  boldly  declares 
that  Augustine  is  using  the  figure  of  speech  called 
by  logicians  an  enthymeme — that  all  his  words  are 
to  be  interpreted '  a  contrario '  or  *  translative.'  This 
may  seem  to  us  an  abuse  in  transferring  to  the  field 
of  definite  controversial  theology  the  method  of 
symbolic  interpretation,  a  method  quite  applicable 
in  regions  acknowledged  to  be  far  above  all 
argument. 

Scotus  insists  that  temporal  relations  can  only 
be  figuratively  applied  to  any  divine  action,  and 
dwells  briefly  on  punishment  as  being  closely 


Scotus  and  predestination  67 

bound  up  with  sin,  not  an  arbitrary  infliction  which 
follows  it.  He  does  not,  however,  enter  as  fully 
here,  as  in  the  last  book  of  De  Dlvisione  Naturae, 
into  his  optimistic  view  of  the  final  beatification  of 
all  existing  creatures  and  the  destruction  of  that 
which  has  only  the  semblance  of  being.  He  seems 
to  regard  the  eternal  fire  as  only  corporeal  in 
nature,  though  very  subtle,  and  the  spiritual  bodies 
of  the  wicked  as  capable  of  suffering  everlasting 
tortures.  But  he  is  evidently  more  consistent  with 
himself  when  he  takes  a  purely  spiritual  view  of 
the  final  dispensations  of  divine  justice,  and  regards 
as  the  real  and  bitter  punishment  of  the  evil  will 
an  eternal  necessity  of  accomplishing  the  service 
which  it  has  vainly  striven  to  reject.  But  if  we 
seem  to  find  him,  when  he  is  trying  hard  to  make 
his  doctrine  agree  with  that  of  Augustine,  guilty 
of  some  disingenuousness,  there  is  nothing  out  of 
character  with  his  general  range  of  ideas  in  his 
indignant  protest  against  any  doctrine  which  may 
seem  to  refer  the  existence  of  evil  to  the  will  and 
the  nature  of  the  Supreme  Good. 

This  treatise,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
caused  a  small  earthquake.  We  are  less  surprised 
that  it  made  men  indignant  than  that  it  was  treated 
in  some  quarters  with  supreme  contempt.  c  Per- 
versity '  and  '  insanity '  were  among  the  mildest 
terms  applied  to  its  doctrine  by  Prudentius,  Bishop 
of  Troyes1,  who  wrote  a  lengthy  treatise  against  it, 

1  His  work  is  in  Migne's  Patrologia,  vol.  cxv. 
F  3 


68  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

accusing  the  author  of  seventy-seven  distinctly 
heretical  utterances.  Prudentius  represents  the 
plain  man  who  is  irritated  with  Scotus  for  twisting 
St.  Augustine  into  accordance  with  his  own  views, 
and  is  justly  vexed  with  expressions  and  ideas  that 
are  beyond  his  range  of  comprehension.  He  could 
not  take  in  the  conception  of  God  as  identical  with 
His  predestination,  nor  that  of  the  retention  of 
free-will  by  fallen  man  as  being  engrained  in  his 
substance,  nor  that  of  the  negative  character  of  pain 
and  evil.  He  can  only  make  up  for  feebleness  in 
argument  by  violence  in  denunciation.  The  second 
attempt  to  refute  Scotus  came  from  the  Church  of 
Lyons,  probably  from  the  pen  of  the  Archbishop 
Remigius.  In  this  work  the  counts  of  heresy 
mount  up  to  one  hundred  and  six.  The  regard  in 
which  Scotus  is  held  may  be  judged  from  the 
following  extract l :  '  Who  (Scotus)  as  we  learn  from 
his  writings,  has  no  knowledge  even  of  the  words 
of  Scripture.  And  so  full  is  he  of  fantastical 
inventions  and  errors,  that  not  only  is  he  of  no 
weight  in  questions  of  faith,  but  even  worthy — 
considering  the  contemptible  character  of  his 
works — unless  he  speedily  turns  and  amends  him- 
self, either  to  be  pitied  as  a  madman  or  to  be 
anathematized  as  a  heretic/ 

Hincmar  did  not  see  fit  to  support  the  reputation 
of  the  champion  he  had  summoned  to  his  aid,  but, 
with  more  prudence  than  generosity,  cited  the 

1  '  De  tribus  epistolis.'     Migne,  vol.  cxx. 


Scotus  and  Predestination  69 

words  of  the  Wise  Man 1,  that  '  he  that  passeth 
by,  and  meddleth  with  strife  belonging  not  to 
him,  is  like  one  that  taketh  a  dog  by  the  ears.' 
The  conflict,  however,  went  on,  and  for  a  time 
the  Anti-Gottschalkian  party  was  triumphant. 
Possibly  the  alliance  with  Charles  the  Bald  had 
stood  Hincmar  in  better  stead  than  the  less  mun- 
dane assistance  of  John  the  Scot.  In  853  another 
council  was  held  at  Chiersey,  where,  by  the 
management  of  Hincmar  and  at  the  express 
command  of  Charles  the  Bald,  four  articles  in  direct 
opposition  to  Gottschalk's  doctrines  were  drawn 
up  and  signed.  They  ran  thus:  (i)  That  there  is 
only  one  predestination  of  God ;  (2)  That  the  free- 
will of  man  is  restored  by  grace  ;  (3)  That  God 
wills  all  men  to  be  saved ;  (4)  That  Christ  suffered 
for  all.  To  each  of  these  an  explanatory  comment 
is  added.  Thus  under  the  first,  predestination  is 
distinguished  from  prescience ;  under  the  second, 
man  is  said  to  have  lost  his  free-will  by  Adam,  but 
to  have  recovered  it  by  Christ ;  under  the  third  it 
is  explained  that  some  men  through  their  own 
fault  are  lost ;  under  the  fourth,  that  the  healing 
cup  could  cure  the  woes  of  all,  but  that  some 
refuse  to  drink  of  it. 

If  these  articles  had  been  presented  to  Scotus, 
he  could,  no  doubt,  have  subscribed  the  principal 
theses  simply,  the  commentaries  only  '  translative.' 
For  as  we  have  seen,  he  did  not  hold  the  distinction 

1   Prov.  xxvi.  17. 


70  Studies  in  Jo/in  the  Scot 

between  predestination  and  foreknowledge  ;  he  did 
not  believe  that  the  first  man  had  forfeited  free-will 
for  the  race ;  he  could  not  have  agreed  that  the 
Eternal  Will  ever  failed  of  its  object,  or  that  for 
any  men  Christ  had  died  in  vain.  Yet  this  belief, 
or  clumsy  compromise,  as  it  may  seem  to  us, 
between  predestination  and  a  more  human  theory  of 
life,  was  all  that  the  Gallican  Church  could  oppose 
to  the  uncompromising  fatalism  of  Gottschalk. 

The  Synod  of  Chiersey  did  not  have  the  last 
word.  An  opposition  was  organized  by  Prudentius 
of  Troyes,  and  vigorously  led  by  Remigius  of  Lyons. 
In  855  another  synod  was  held  at  Valence  under 
the  auspices  of  King  Lothaire.  A  dispute  between 
rival  princes  was  curiously  intermixed  with  decisions 
on  the  most  recondite  of  theological  questions.  The 
four  articles  of  Chiersey  were  reversed;  nineteen 
propositions  from  the  work  of  Scotus  were  pro- 
nounced heretical ;  and  the  partisans  of  his  belief 
were  censured  in  no  measured  terms  *. 

The  decentralized  character  of  the  Church  at  this 
time  cannot  be  more  distinctly  seen  than  iu  the 
diametrically  opposite  decisions  of  two  independent 
synods.  Hincmar  made  an  effort  to  obtain  a  papal 

1  '  Ineptas  autem  quaestiunculas  et  aniles  pene  fabulas,  Scotorum- 
que  pultes  puritati  fidei  nauseam  inferentes,  quae  .  .  .  usque  ad 
scissionem  caritatis  miserabiliter  et  lacrymabiliter  succreverunt  .  .  . 
penitus  respuimus.'  Hefele,  Conciliengeschichte,  voL  iv.  456. 
Other  mentions  of  Scotus  in  the  decrees  of  this  Synod  may  be  seen 
in  Ussher,  chap,  xii,  and  in  Floss's  Introduction  to  Scotus'  De 
Praedestinatione,  p.  354. 


Scotus  and  Predestination  71 

decision  on  his  own  side,  but  Hincmar  and  his 
policy  with  regard  to  the  authority  of  metropolitans 
were  not  in  favour  at  Rome,  and  no  quite  distinct 
utterance  seems  to  have  come  from  the  papal  chair. 
After  more  tumultuary  synods  and  more  persistent 
efforts  on  the  part  of  Hincmar,  who  composed 
during  the  latter  part  of  the  controversy  two 
voluminous  works  on  the  subject,  the  Synod  of 
Toucy,  in  860,  reaffirmed  the  Articles  of  Chiersey, 
and  for  a  time,  at  least,  the  conflict  seemed  to  have 
abated. 

The  Gottschalkian  controversy  did  not  lead  to 
any  schism  in  the  Church,  though  it  brought  to 
light  seeds  of  discord  which  might  have  rent 
asunder  a  more  consolidated  body  than  the  Church 
of  the  ninth  century.  Wearisome  enough  in  its 
plentiful  crops  of  bad  arguments  and  half-sincere 
interpretations,  the  dispute  has  some  interest  for 
our  present  purpose  in  marking  out  clearly  the 
fundamentally  different  standpoints  of  the  detached 
philosopher  and  the  professional  theologian.  But 
besides  this,  it  is  important  to  the  student  of 
mediaeval  history  in  suggesting  the  question  : 
Where,  at  this  period,  lay  the  supreme  authority  in 
matters  of  faith  and  doctrine  ?  In  the  papal  see, 
the  Isidorian  decretals  might  declare.  But  the 
views  which  they  embodied  were  not  universally 
accepted.  Hincmar  is  accused  of  respecting  or 
discarding  them  according  to  temporary  motives 
of  policy.  In  national  synods,  the  metropolitans 


72  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

might  affirm.  But  as  yet  nationalities  were  only 
in  course  of  formation,  and  boundaries  were  always 
shifting.  Even  if  it  seemed  right  and  fitting  that 
Lorraine  should  accept  double  predestination  while 
France  held  that  it  was  single,  what  were  Christians 
to  think  who  lived  on  the  frontier  ?  Gottschalk 
and  Scotus  were,  from  opposite  points  of  view, 
more  thorough-going  than  the  others  in  their  tests 
of  truth.  Each  proposed  a  fourfold  way :  Gottschalk 
the  ordeal  of  boiling  water,  boiling  oil,  boiling- 
pitch,  and  fire ;  Scotus,  the  logical  methods  of 
diaeretic,  horistic,  apodictic,  and  analytic.  Perhaps 
neither  way  would  seem  to  us  quite  adequate  to  the 
occasion,  but  that  of  Scotus  is,  at  least,  the  more 
civilized  of  the  two. 


CHAPTER    IV 

SYMBOLISM   AND   SACRAMENT.      PART    TAKEN    BY 
SCOTUS   IN   THE   EUCHARISTIC    CONTROVERSY 

BX«7TO/i6i'  yctp  dpn  81'  faonrpov  fv  alviy/^an. 

THE  predestinarian  controversy  had  served  as 
an  interesting  illustration  of  the  principle  laid 
down  by  Scotus — that  religion  and  philosophy  are 
fundamentall^Jjhe  same.  It  may  be  regarded  as 
a  conBnnation  or  as  a  refutation  of  that  principle 
according  to  our  point  of  view.  For  while  it  had 
shown  that  a  want  of  familiarity  with  philosophical 
terms  and  abstract  conceptions  rendered  incoherent 
all  utterances  and  arguments  on  the  deepest  prob- 
lems of  religion,  it  had  also  shown  that  an  attempt 
to  deal  with  such  problems  in  the  light  of  Greek 
philosophy,  and  to  solve  them  by  the  approved 
dialectic  methods,  was  not  only  unintelligible  to 
those  engaged  in  building  up  the  fabric  of  mediaeval 
theology,  but  was  regarded  by  them  as  being  in  the 
highest  degree  presumptuous  and  unsafe.  The 
results  arrived  at  on  both  sides  might  seem  to  be 
capable  of  expression  in  phrases  by  no  means 


74  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

mutually  contradictory.  Even  the  literary  style 
and  the  nature  of  citations  from  approved  writers 
might  seem  to  have  points  of  strong  resemblance  ; 
yet  below  any  superficial  likeness  was  the  deep- 
seated  division  between  two  conflicting  tendencies, 
two  essentially  incompatible  views  of  reason  and 
authority,  of  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  the 
human  intellect. 

No  less  do  these  remarks  apply  to  the  other  great 
controversy  of  the  century,  that  relating  to  the 
nature  of  the  Eucharist.  In  one  sense  this  dispute 
may  be  thought  to  lie  on  a  different  plane  from  the 
former,  in  that  it  belongs  exclusively  to  theological 
and  religious  ideas,  and  can  never,  apart  from  such 
ideas,  occupy  the  mind  at  all.  Yet,  like  the  question 
of  predestination,  this  one  has  narrower  and  also 
wider  bearings.  Those  who  argued  for  single  or 
double  predestination  saw,  or  might  have  seen,  that 
they  were  only  on  the  fringe  of  the  great  mystery 
of  man's  relation  to  his  environment,  a  mystery  far 
older  than  the  religion  they  professed ;  and  similarly 
those  who  disputed  as  to  the  kind  of  change 
effected  in  the  sacramental  elements  by  priestly 
consecration  showed,  by  the  ground  they  took, 
how  they  conceived  of  the  proper  functions  of 
symbolism  in  helping  towards  the  least  inadequate 
conception  of  transcendental  objects. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  ancient  controversies 
of  the  Greeks  as  to  the  use  and  abuse  of  the  popular 
mythology  are  connected  with  the  question  before 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament          75 

us.  Plato,  as  every  one  knows,  would  have  elimi- 
nated all  stories  which  gave  an  unworthy  notion 
of  divine  beings  from  the  education  of  the  young 
citizens  in  his  ideal  state.  The  Alexandrians 
would  have  retained  them,  and  explained  away 
or  reinterpreted  in  a  moralized  sense  their  seeming 
incongruities.  Yet  both  would  press  symbolism 
into  the  service  of  truth.  Indeed,  though  questions 
as  to  symbols  and  sacraments  may  not  belong  to 
philosophy  apart  from  religion,  any  philosophy 
which  takes  account  of  the  religious  consciousness 
— still  more  any  practical  philosophy  which  seeks 
to  regulate  in  harmonious  co-operation  the  con- 
flicting forces  of  mind  and  character — must  be 
constantly  occupied  in  distinguishing  the  legitimate 
from  the  overstrained  action  of  the  symbolizing 
faculty  in  man. 

There  are  other  points  of  resemblance  between 
this  controversy  and  the  one  lately  considered. 
Here,  as  there,  the  material  and  the  spiritual  are 
opposed  ;  our  philosopher,  of  course,  taking  the  part 
of  the  spiritual,  but  at  the  same  time  going  so  far 
beyond  the  others  on  his  side  as  to  spiritualize 
matter  itself,  and  so  put  himself  out  of  sympathy 
with  both  parties.  It  seems  hardly  necessary  to  say 
that  here,  as  before,  we  have  St.  Augustine  quoted 
on  both  sides,  though  in  this  field  he  may  seem  to 
be  more  fairly  appealed  to  by  the  allies  of  Scotus 
than  by  his  opponents.  And  once  more  we  have 
very  tangible,  practical,  worldly  questions,  com- 


76  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

plicated  with  those  naturally  belonging  to  a  high 
region  of  thought.  For  as  a  strict  view  of  pre- 
destination had  seemed  to  tend  to  a  disparagement 
of  ecclesiastical  rule,  sacramental  efficacy,  and 
sacerdotal  authority,  still  more  did  any  theory 
which,  in  the  mind  of  the  ordinary  Christian,  seemed 
to  diminish  the  astounding  change  made  in  sacra- 
mental bread  and  wine  by  priestly  consecration 
threaten  to  relax  the  hold  of  clerical  authority  on 
the  life  of  the  laity.  It  seems  more  natural,  even, 
that  Hincmar  of  Rheims  should  oppose  John  the 
Scot  in  this  controversy  than  that  he  should  have 
appealed  for  his  aid  against  the  strict  predes- 
tinarians. 

Yet  for  the  student  of  the  controversy,  and  es- 
pecially of  the  part  taken  in  it  by  Scotus,  there  is 
a  great  practical  difference,  in  that  we  have  no  work 
of  Scotus  written  with  the  direct  object  of  refuting 
the  opposite  side.  If  he  ever  wrote  such  a  book — 
a  much  disputed  question,  to  which  we  shall  have 
to  return — it  has  hopelessly  perished.  Those  who 
have  studied  the  controversial  work  of  Scotus  in 
the  previous  dispute,  and  compared  it  with  what 
we  should  have  gathered  as  to  his  opinions  on  the 
subject  from  his  utterances  in  his  more  constructive 
treatises,  will  by  no  means  regret  this  fact.  ^  In  his 
various  works,  especially  his  Commentaries  on 
Dionysius,  his  De  Divisione  Naturae,  and  his 
fragment  on  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  we  have  ample 
material  for  constructing  his  views  on  sacraments 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament          77 

and  symbols,  without  the  difficulty  of  having  to 
allow  for  the  conscious  or  unconscious  warping 
of  the  mind  necessary  in  any  who  holds  a  brief  for 
a  case,  while  he  reserves  some  private  opinion  of 
his  own. 

But,  indeed,  if  Scotus  had  been  less  explicit,  we 
should  have  been  able  to  conjecture  his  general 
attitude  from  his  relation  to  the  Neo-Platonic 
philosophy  in  general,  and  toDionysius  in  particular. 
From  what  we  have  said  as  to  the  Neo-Platonic 
conception  of  the  Deity  as  unknown  and  unknow- 
able, yet  communicating  something  of  itself  to  the 
human  mind  by  virtue  of  the  divine  element  in 
man  and  in  nature,  it  follows  that  all  knowledge  of 
the  supersensuous  must  necessarily  be  clothed  in 
symbolic  form — must  be  presented  in  such  incom- 
plete and  fragmentary  ways  as  render  it  capable 
of  being  grasped  by  the  receptive  soul.  And  every 
soul  will  derive  more  or  less  knowledge  and 
strength  from  symbolic  utterance  and  sacramental 
usage  as  its  own  individual  position  in  the  upward 
path  to  purity  and  light  is  advanced  or  backward. 
It  may  be  said  that  if  the  Neo-Platonists  had  found 
no  sacraments  ready  to  hand,  they  would  have  had 
to  invent  some.  But  such  were  already  in  existence, 
and  growing  in  influence  ;  first,  among  the  Hellenes, 
the  various  mysteries,  especially  the  newer  ones  of 
oriental  origin ;  later,  the  two,  or  three,  or  seven 
Sacraments — according  to  the  yet  undefined  method 
of  reckoning — in  the  Christian  Church. 


78  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

All  recent  inquirers  into  the  history  of  Pagan 
ritual1  have  dwelt  on  the  peculiar  importance 
attached  to  the  ancient  mysteries  during  the  later 
phases  of  Hellenic  and  of  Imperial  times,  and  the 
readiness  with  which  foreign  rites  of  mystic  sig- 
nificance were  adopted  in  the  Graeco-Roman  world. 
The  developments  which  they  describe  are  con- 
sidered as  a  response  to  the  needs  of  an  age  which 
had  grown  cosmopolitan  in  its  culture,  philanthropic 
in  its  ethics,  and  eclectic  or  pantheistic  in  its 
religious  beliefs ;  which  retained  the  old  national 
cults  from  patriotic  and  conservative  feelings,  but 
sought  the  satisfaction  of  its  private  religious 
aspirations  in  a  more  exciting  ceremonial,  and  in 
doctrines  involving  a  wider  hope.  At  the  same 
time,  writers  on  the  early  history  of  the  Christian 
Church 2  have  shown  how,  at  a  quite  early  period, 
the  conceptions,  and  even  the  language,  applied  to 
the  Pagan  mysteries  were  transferred  to  the  most 
sacred  observances  of  Christianity.  Of  course  the 
mystic  element  in  all  cults  is  but  loosely  con- 
nected with  the  authentic  history  of  their  origins, 
or  rather,  the  real  historic  origin  is  often  obscured 
by  the  aetiological  myths  invented  to  explain 
pieces  of  ancient  ritual.  But  whereas  in  the  Pagan 
mysteries,  the  old-world  superstitions — interesting 

1  See,  among  many  other  authorities,  Percy  Gardner  on  '  The 
Mysteries '  in  the  Manual  of  Greek  Antiquities,  by  Gardner  and 
Jevons ;  and  Jean  ReVille  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  Part  I  of  La  Religion 
a  Rome  sous  les  Severes. 

2  Notably  Dr.  Edwin  Hatch,  in  the  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1888. 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament          79 

enough  to  the  modern  anthropologist — which  first 
gave  rise  to  the  secret  rites  practised  at  Eleusis 
or  at  Pessinus,  were  overlaid  or  lost  to  the  later 
worshipper,  the  original  actions  and  intentions 
of  the  earliest  celebrants  of  the  Christian  sacra- 
ments, though  in  matters  of  detail  they  leave  wide 
scope  to  the  archaeologist  and  the  historian,  are 
sufficiently  well  known  to  afford  some  touchstone  , 
for  checking  the  accretion  of  superstitious  fancy 
and  for  limiting  the  field  of  legitimate  development. 
Thus  the  power  of  symbolism  is  not  much 
lessened  by  the  growth  of  a  rationalism  that  brings 
its  unsparing  light  into  the  obscure  corners  of 
pseudo-historical  origins  or  pseudo-scientific  uses. 
Its  danger — in  so  far  as,  in  a  natural  and  healthy 
state,  it  is  a  power  for  good — lies  rather  in  the 
ignorance  which  overlooks  symbolic  meaning  and 
can  only  distinguish  between  the  tangible  and  the 
unreal.  And  if  the  mysterious  is  reduced  to  the 
tangible  it  descends  to  the  rank  of  the  magical. 
Tho~se  who  believe  in  the  necessity  of  symbolism 
for  all  religious  worship  and  religious  thought  can 
only  save  it  from  a  childish  degradation  by  enlarg- 
ing the  sphere  of  the  symbolic  till  it  comprehends 
all  material  things  in  so  far  as  they  bear  witness 
to  the  spiritual,  and  by  refusing  to  regard  as  a  I 
reality  any  phenomenon  by  which  such  witness 1 
cannot  be  borne. 

1  For  the  distinction  between  mystery  and  symbol  proper  see    / 
Scotus'  Comment,  on  St.  Jn.,  Floss,  pp.  344,  345. 


8o  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Now,  according-  to  Scotus,  a  sacrament  or  mystery 
is  an  expression  of  hidden  truths  by  actions  as 
well  as  by  words.  A  symbol  pure  and  simple 
is  an  expression  by  words  only,  as  an  allegorical 
phrase,  or  a  parable  like  that  of  Dives  and  Lazarus. 
The  difference,  however,  does  not  seem  to  lie  very 
deep,  for  the  eye  accustomed  to  symbolic  views 
finds  a  sacramental  significance  in  every  part  of 
nature  and  of  human  history.  A  curious  illustra- 
tion of  the  close  resemblance  to  be  traced  between 
the  Pagan  Neo-Platonists  in  their  treatment  of 
mysteries,  and  the  Christians  like  Dionysius  in  their 
view  of  symbols  and  sacraments,  is  seen  in  the 
similar  attitude  taken  up  by  both  towards  in- 
congruous or  grotesque  comparisons.  Thus  Julian 1, 
in  his  Oration  in  honour  of  the  Mother  of  the  Gods, 
justifies  the  repetition  of  the  strange  story  of 
Cybele  and  Atys,  commemorated  in  Syrian  rites, 
by  showing  how  far  more  likely  such  stories  are 
to  stimulate  a  search  for  occult  wisdom,  and  to  re- 
main withdrawn  from  any  superficial  and  material 
significance,  than  those  which  are  clothed  in  more 
sedate  form.  And  Scotus2,  following  Dionysius, 
dwells  in  very  similar  fashion  on  the  value  of 
the  avonoiov  in  the  ascription  to  the  Deity  of  the 
passions  of  humanity  and  the  properties  of  the 
material  creation. 

This  view   is  worked    out,  with  regard  to  the 

1  Or.  v.  170. 

2  Commentary  on  De  Cod.  Hier.  ii,  par.  3. 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament         81 

several  sacraments,  in  the  treatise  of  Dionysius, 
De  Ecclesiastica  Hierarchies.  First,  he  gives  in 
each  case  an  account,  of  great  interest  to  the  anti- 
quarian, of  the  rites  and  ceremonies  attending  the 
celebration  of  each  in  turn.  Then  he  proceeds  to 
give  a  mystic  meaning  to  every  part  of  the  ritual 
practised.  The  commentaries  of  Scotus,  so  far  as 
they  are  extant,  do  not  comprise  this  work ;  but 
it  wag^tran  si  ated— by  Scotus,  and  there  is  no 
reason"  to  suppose  that  he  did  not  agree  with  its 
contents. 

We  may  take  as  bearing  most  distinctly  on  our 
subject  his  description  of  the  communion  or  synaxis1, 
which  latter  word  he  explains,  not  in  its  usual 
interpretation  of  a  gathering  of  Christians  to  cele- 
brate the  Eucharist,  but  as  a  bringing  together 
of  the  scattered,  discordant  elements  of  human 
nature  into  the  divine  unity.  In  his  opening 
remarks  he  shows  with  what  deep  reverence  he 
regards  this  '  rite  of  rites/  without  which  no  other 
is  complete.  This  superiority  is,  however,  not  due 
to  miraculous  change  in  any  material  objects,  but 
to  the  fact  that  in  it  is  commemorated  the  central 
idea  of  his  religion,  the  communication  of  divine 
life  to  the  human  soul. 

The  parts  of  which  the  ritual  consists  are  as 
follows:  the  priest  (  =  iepdpxr)s)  offers  a  prayer 
before  the  altar,  where  incense  is  burned,  and 
makes  a  procession  round  the  choir  of  the  church  ; 

1  De  Eccles.  Hierarch.  iii. 
G 


82  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

he  then  begins  a  psalm,  in  which  all  the  clergy 
(the  whole  ecclesiastical  order,  not  the  laity)  join; 
next  comes  the  reading  of  a  portion  of  Scripture 
by  the  deacons  ;  afterwards  all  catechumens,  ener- 
gumens,  and  penitents  depart ;  the  doors  are  shut, 
and  the  bread  and  wine  are  placed  on  the  altar 
while  another  hymn  is  sung ;  the  priest  offers 
another  prayer,  sends  the  pax  round  to  be  kissed, 
and  recites  certain  sacred  words ;  then  he  and  all 
the  clergy  wash  their  hands,  and  after  a  prayer 
of  thanksgiving  he  consecrates  the  elements  and 
displays  them  to  the  people  ;  he  then  communicates 
himself,  and  invites  the  faithful  to  do  the  like ; 
then  follows  the  giving  of  thanks,  and  the  con- 
gregation regard  the  mysteries,  while  the  priest 
himself  is  rapt  in  holy  contemplation. 

To  each  part  of  this  ceremonial  Dionysius  pro- 
ceeds to  attach  a  religious  significance,  the  central 
action  of  the  whole  corresponding  to  the  partici- 
pation in  the  divine  nature,  which  is  possible  to 
man  through  the  Incarnation  of  the  Logos. 

While  we  cannot  trace  in  the  description  by 
Dionysius  any  foreshadowing  of  the  doctrine  of 
Transubstantiation,  he  seems  equally  remote  from 
the  conception  of  the  Mass — of  a  sacrifice  offered 
by  the  priest  on  behalf  of  the  people.  True,  we 
find  germs  of  two  of  the  three  kinds  of  sacrifice 
distinguished  by  Robertson  Smith  and  by  all  who 
have  since  written  on  the  subject — of  the  thank- 
offering,  and  of  the  mystic  union  with  the  victim — 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament          83 

but  not  so  much,  perhaps,  of  the  piacular  gift  for 
atonement.  The  various  parts  of  the  service — the 
prayers,  the  sacred  reading,  and  the  commemoration 
of  living  and  dead — are  not  treated  as  if  wholly 
subsidiary  either  to  the  consecration  or  to  the 
oblation  of  the  elements. 

If  we  turn  from  Dionysius  to  Scotus,  we  find 
the  samesa^ramental  theory,_based  on  a  similar 
conception  of  the  relation  of  the  divine  to  the 
natural  and  to  the  human.  In  one  sense,  all  nature 
is  mysterious  and  of  sacramental  meaning :  '  there 
is,  I  consider,  nothing  in  the  visible  and  material 
world  which  does  not  signify  somewhat  immaterial 
and  reasonable1.'  The  institutions  and  doctrines 
of  the  Church  show  forth  symbolically  what  cannot 
be  shown  in  any  other  way.  Baptism  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  are  thus  taken  together. 
'  When  any  faithful  persons  receive  the  sacrament 
of  baptism,  what  happens  but  the  conception  and 
birth  in  their  hearts  of  God  the  Word,  of  and  through 
the  Holy  Ghost?  Thus  every  day  Christ  is  con- 
ceived in  the  womb  of  faith  as  in  that  of  a  pure 
mother,  and  is  born  and  nourished  V  His  opinion 
as  to  the  necessity  of  sacraments  is  not  entirely 
clear,  since  he  regards  their  material  element  as 
merely  temporary,  though  closely  connected  with 
their  spiritual  significance.  He  calls  baptism  '  the 
sacrament  by  which  we  are  reborn,'  yet  insists 
on  the  need  of  faith  for  the  efficacy  of  that  sacra- 
1  De  Dii:  Nat.  v.  3.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  33. 

G  2 


84  Studies-  in  John  the  Scot 

ment l.  And  of  the  Eucharist  he  says  :  '  For  we 
also,  who  after  His  incarnation  and  passion  and 
resurrection  have  believed  in  Him,  and  understood 
His  mysteries,  as  far  as  is  possible  for  us,  do  both 
in  our  spirits  sacrifice  Him,  and  in  our  minds — not 
with  our  teeth — eat  of  Him2.'  And  again3,  'Of 
these  things  (i.  e.  the  sacrifice  and  triumph  of 
Christ)  the  sacred  symbols  are  now  celebrated, 
while  what  was  formerly  known  to  our  minds 
appears  to  our  eyes,  since  the  pious  mind  tastes 
inwardly  the  body  of  Christ,  the  stream  of  sacred 
blood,  and  the  ransom-price  of  the  world  (pretium 
mundi).'  This  last  passage  does  indeed  seem  to 
point  to  the  idea  of  a  piacular  sacrifice,  but  there 
does  not  seem  to  be  any  reference  to  the  eucharistic 
celebration  as  the  actual  offering  of  a  sacrifice. 
The  extract  is  from  an  Easter  hymn,  in  which 
Christ  is  regarded  as  the  self-offered  Paschal  lamb 
of  which  the  celebrants  figuratively  partake. 

Having  obtained  some  notion  of  the  general 
teaching  of  Scotus  and  his  school  as  to  the  sacra- 
ments, and  especially  as  to  the  Eucharist,  let  us 
pass  on  to  inquire  into  the  aspect  in  which  this 
subject  was  viewed  by  the  men  of  his  time,  and 
the  reasons  why  his  opinions  came  to  collide  with 
those  of  Hincmar  and  other  great  churchmen  of 
his  day  4. 

1  Comm.  Ev.  sec.  loh.,  Floss,  pp.  315-318. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  311. 

*  De  Paschate,  u.  61-4,  p.  1226  in  Floss. 

4  Of  course  the  growth  of  the  Catholic  conception  of  the  Eucharist 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament         85 

The  question  of  the  day  .was  as  to  the  change 
made  in  the  sacred  elements  by  consecration.  The 
term  transubstantiation  was  not  yet  current,  but 
the  result  of  this  controversy  ^  was  to  cause  the 
prevalence  of  the  conception  involved  in  that  word. 
The  belief  that  a  change  (/xera/3oA?/)  took  place  in 
the  bread  and  wine  was  generally  held,  but  the 
specific  nature  of  the  change  was  for  centuries  left 
indefinite.  In  496,  Pope  Gelasius  declared :  '  esse 
non  desinit  substantia  vel  natura  panis  et  vini.' 
At  the  same  time,  the  sacrament  is  spoken  of  both 
by  Greek  and  Latin  Fathers  as  a  sacrifice.  This 
language,  however,  seems  to  be  figurative  and 
somewhat  vague.  It  seems  to  be  agreed  that  the 
celebration  of  masses  to  ransom  the  souls  of  the 
departed  was  not  practised  before  Gregory  the  Great. 

The  sacramental  controversy  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury is  generally  taken  to  begin  with  a  treatise 
published  by  the  monk  Paschasius  Radbertus,  who 
was  Abbot  of  Corbie  from  844  to  85 1 ;  and  therefore, 
most  probably,  a  senior  contemporary  of  John  the 
Scot.  In  his  treatise,  De  Corpore  et  Sanguine 
Domini1,  he  expounded  what  may  be  called  the 
ultra- sacramentarian  view,  and  prepared  the  way 

fills  a  large  part  in  all  the  Church  Histories.  For  a  clear  account 
I  may  especially  refer  to  Kurtz,  translated  by  Edersheim,  vol.  i, 
p.  227  et  seq.,  and  p.  361  et  seq.,  and  to  Gieseler,  vol.  ii,  English 
translation,  p.  48  et  seq.,  and  to  Noorden  as  before ;  also  to 
Cheetham's  Church  History,  pp.  374,  375. 
1  It  is  published  in  Migne's  Patrologia,  vol.  cxx,  pp.  1267- 


86  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

for  the  doctrine  which  the  Church  of  Rome  after- 
wards authorized,  and  has  ever  since  maintained 
as  the  corner-stone  of  her  fabric.  He  insists  that 
the  change  in  the  elements  at  consecration  is  that 
of  complete  transformation  into  the  body  and  blood 
of  Christ,  the  very  same  body  that  was  born  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  and  the  same  blood  that  flowed  in  its 
veins.  The  change  has  not  been  made  apparent  to 
the  outward  senses,  because  the  consumption  of 
the  body  and  blood  would  be  impossible  if  there 
were  no  disguise  in  the  form.  Not  being  patent 
to  the  unfaithful,  the  change  differs  from  a  miracle, 
and  is  more  correctly  called  a  mystery.  Neverthe- 
less, for  the  conviction  of  infidels,  the  change  has 
more  than  once  been  made  in  palpable  form. 
Visions  have  been  seen  of  a  new-born  babe  under 
the  hands  of  the  consecrating  priest,  and  an  un- 
believing Jew  was  once  nearly  choked  in  trying 
to  swallow  the  holy  bread.  Some  of  the  details  to 
which  the  application  of  the  principle  leads  are 
materialistic  to  a  degree  which  may  to  moderns 
seem  disgusting,  and  others  are  exceedingly  puerile, 
yet  the  inward  action  of  the  received  elements  is 
described  as  purely  spiritual ;  the  participation  is 
'per  fidem,'  not  'per  speciem,'  and  the  opposite 
school  might  agree  in  the  definition  of  sacramentum 
as  'quidquid  in  aliqua  celebratione  divina  nobis 
quasi  pignus  salutis  traditur,'  though  they  might 
demur  to  what  follows:  'cum  res  gesta  visibilis 
longe  aliud  invisibile  intus  operatur,  quod  sancte 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament         87 

accipiendum  sit.'  We  may  observe  that  a  trace  is 
seen  of  the  vagueness  still  surrounding  the  number 
and  nature  of  the  Sacraments,  in  that  both  the 
Incarnation  and  the  instruction  by  Scripture  had, 
as  with  Dionysius  and  Scotus,  a  sacramental 
character  ascribed  to  them. 

But  in  spite  of  this  generality  and  vagueness, 
and  of  the  denial  of  any  miracle  in  the  mystic 
change,  there  seemed  to  many  of  Radbertus's  con- 
temporaries, as  to  writers  of  a  later  day,  something 
materialistic  and  superstitious  in  the  main  prin- 
ciple of  the  treatise.  At  the  same  time,  the  ex- 
ceeding importance  which  it  would  give  to  the 
function  of  the  officiating  priest,  and  the  increased 
importance  it  assigned  to  sacramental  observance 
on  the  part  of  the  laity,  would  naturally  commend 
it  to  those  who  saw,  not  merely  their  own  pro- 
fessional interest,  but  the  order  and  well-being 
of  Christendom  bound  up  in  the  maintenance  of 
a  strong,  dignified,  and  venerated  hierarchy.  We 
are  not,  therefore,  surprised  to  find  Hincrnar  of 
Rheims  on  the  side  of  Radbertus.  At  the  same 
time  Rabanus  Maurus,  the  great  opponent  of 
Gottschalk,  wrote  on  the  opposite  side.  Another 
controversialist  who  had  taken  part  in  the  other 
dispute,  Ratramnus  the  Monk 1,  opposed  the  doc- 
trines of  Radbertus,  and  is  therefore  apparently,  this 
time,  on  the  same  side  as  John  the  Scot.  He  is, 

1  His  book :  De  Corpore  et  Sanguine  Domini  is  in  Migne's 
Patrologia,  vol.  cxxi,  p.  103  et  seq. 


88  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

however,  not  so  bitter  as  to  shrink  from  giving  the 
appellation  '  quidam  fidelium '  to  those  who  hold 
opposite  views  from  his  own. 

Meantime  a  royal  theologian  had  appeared,  at 
least  as  spectator  of  the  combat.     The  treatise  of 
Radbertus  had  been  addressed  to  Charles  the  Bald, 
and  that  of  Ratramnus  was  an   answer  to   two 
questions  which  Charles  had  put  to  him  on  two 
salient  points  of  Radbertus's  teaching.     These  were 
(i)  do  the  elements,  after  consecration,  contain  an 
occult  power  recognized  by  faith  but  not  by  sight  ? 
and  (2)  is  the  body  of  Christ,  of  which  the  congre- 
gation partake,  the  actual  body  that  was  born  and 
died  ?     To  the  former  of  these  questions  Ratramnus 
seems  to  return  an  affirmative  answer,  to  the  latter 
a  very  emphatic  negative.     Yet  some  of  his  ex- 
pressions seem  compatible  with  very  high  sacra- 
mentarian  views :  '  The  body  and  blood  of  Christ, 
which  are  in  the  Church  received  by  the  mouth  of 
the  faithful,  are  figures  according  to  visible  form, 
but  according  to  their  invisible  substance,  that  is, 
to  the  power  of  the  Divine  Word,  they  are  in  truth 
the  body  and  blood  of  Christ.'     But  again  he  says : 
'  What  the  Church  celebrates  is  the  body  and  blood 
of  Christ,  but  as  it  were  a  pledge,  an  image.'     '  A 
pledge  and  an  image  have  reference,  not  to  them- 
selves, but  to  something  else.'     And  he  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  other  signification  of  '  corpus  Domini ' 
in  which  it  stands  for  the  whole  company  of  the 
faithful. 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament         89 

These  extracts  are  sufficient  to  show  that  on 
neither  side  was  the  doctrine  held  in  a  form  which 
has  prevailed  through  the  centuries,  and  that  it  is 
futile  alike  for  Protestants  to  adopt  Ratramnus  as 
their  forerunner  and  for  Roman  Catholics  to  appro- 
priate Radbertus.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  real 
difference  of  view  between  the  opponents.  One 
cannot  help  regarding  the  conflict  as  being  waged 
between  idealism  and  materialism,  though  the 
idealists  appeal  to  occult  changes  which  seem 
almost  to  savour  of  magic,  and  the  materialists 
maintain  the  spiritual  aspect  in  so  far  as  they 
confine  sacramental  efficacy  within  the  dominion 
of  faith. 

For  a  time,  the  rival  views  were  maintained  in 
smouldering  hostility,  but  they  broke  out  into 
energetic  conflict  in  the  middle  of  the  next  century. 
The  views  of  Ratramnus  were  upheld  by  Beren- 
garius  of  Tours ;  those  of  Radbertus  by  Lanfranc, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Berengarius  considered 
himself  to  be  a  follower  of  John  the  Scot :  '  If,'  he 
wrote  to  Lanfranc *,  '  you  make  a  heretic  of  John, 
whose  opinions  on  the  Eucharist  we  approve,  you 
will  also  make  heretics  of  Ambrose,  Jerome,  and 
Augustine,  not  to  mention  others.'  But  the  Church 
was  now  under  the  more  centralized  government 
of  the  great  reforming  popes  who  were  carrying 
out  the  ideas  of  Clugny.  In  1050  Berengarius 
was  condemned,  though  not  present,  in  a  council 

1  The  passage  is  quoted  by  Gieseler,  vol.  ii.  p.  399. 


90  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

held  by  Leo  IX  in  Rome,  and  later  in  the  same 
year  by  one  at  Vercelli.  In  spite  of  the  favour  in 
which,  for  a  time,  he  believed  himself  to  stand 
with  Hildebrand,  it  was  under  the  pontificate  of 
Gregory  VII  that  he  was  again  condemned  at  a 
synod  held  in  Rome  in  1 059.  Here  he  consented 
to  subscribe  the  following  recantation:  'I,  Beren- 
garius,  do  anathematize  every  heresy,  particularly 
the  one  by  which,  hitherto,  I  have  brought  shame 
on  myself.  ...  I  agree  with  the  Holy  Roman 
Church  that  the  bread  and  wine  which  are  placed 
on  the  altar  are,  after  consecration,  not  only  the 
sacrament,  but  the  real  body  and  blood  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  and  that  sensibly,  not  merely  as 
sacrament,  but  in  reality,  it  is  handled  by  the 
hands  of  the  priests,  broken  and  ground  by  the 
teeth  of  the  faithful.'  From  this  confession,  how- 
ever, Berengarius  took  flight  as  soon  as  possible. 
Another  war  of  words  and  documents  followed, 
and  in  1079  there  was  another  condemnation  at 
Rome,  and  another  confession  extracted  from  Beren- 
garius, which,  however,  he  abjured  with  all  speed. 
He  met,  nevertheless,  with  a  very  lenient  treatment 
at  the  hands  of  Hildebrand,  and  was  allowed  to 
retire  to  the  island  of  St.  Come,  near  Tours,  where 
he  lived  in  respect  and  honour  till  his  death  in 
1088,  and  was  afterwards  revered  as  a  kind  of 
local  saint,  an  annual  feast  being  celebrated  in 
his  memory. 

The  last  word  had  not  yet  been  said,  but  the 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament         9i 

most  salient  doctrine  of  the  Roman  Church  had 
been  declared  in  a  council  held  by  the  greatest 
pope  of  the  Middle  Ages.  And  here,  again,  the 
philosopher  John  is  on  the  side  of  the  retrogrades, 
who  are  cited  in  favour  of  Greek  mysticism  by  the 
last  opponents  of  mediaeval  and  Latin  sacra- 
mentalism. 

This  last  decision,  however,  was  not  made  till 
a  hundred  years  after  Scotus  was  dead.  To  what 
extent  was  his  influence,  actual  or  posthumous, 
felt  during  the  contest  ? 

Two  facts  are  patent :  that  Scotus  did  not  think 
of  the  Sacraments  as  did  those  whose  opinions 
finally  prevailed ;  and  that  he  was  appealed  to 
as  an  authority  by  one  set  of  controversialists, 
vehemently  denounced  by  the  other.  But  there  is 
a  narrower  question,  of  literary  interest  and  very 
much  disputed  :  Did  Scotus  actually  write  a  book 
on  the  Eucharist  Controversy  ? 

Three  answers  may  be  propounded  to  this 
question:  (i)  that  he  wrote  a  book  which  has  not 
come  down  to  us ;  (2)  that  he  wrote  the  treatise 
commonly  attributed  to  Ratramnus ;  and  (3)  that 
we  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  wrote  any 
book  at  all ;  while  it  is  probable  that  both  friends 
and  foes  took  the  treatise  of  Ratramnus  as  his. 

The  chief  reasons  for  supposing  that  Scotus 
wrote  a  separate  work  on  the  subject  are  the 
following :  In  the  first  place  we  have  the  words  of 
Hincmar  in  the  second  treatise,  De  Praedesti- 


92  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

natione  J,  that  according  to  the  opinion  of  John 
the  Scot,  the  '  sacrament  of  the  altar  is  not  the 
real  body  and  the  real  blood  of  the  Lord,  but  only 
a  memorial  of  His  real  body  and  real  blood.' 
It  is  said2  that  this  expression  does  not  exactly 
coincide  with  anything  to  be  found  either  in  the 
extant  works  of  Scotus  or  in  that  of  Ratramnus. 
Whether  conscious  or  unconscious  manipulation 
might  produce  such  a  form  of  words  is  a  question 
to  be  left  to  experts. 

Then  again  we  have  a  treatise  by  a  certain 
Abbot  Adrevaldus  who  was  alive  in  870:  'De 
Corpore  et  Sanguine  Christi,  contra  ineptias  Scoti 3.' 
This,  however,  is  merely  a  jejune  exposition  com- 
posed almost  entirely  of  quotations  from  Scripture 
and  the  Fathers,  and  equally  adapted  to  refute 
the  '  ineptiae '  of  Scotus,  of  Ratramnus,  or  of  any 
one  else  who  had  written  on  that  side.  More  to 
the  point,  in  the  judgement  of  competent  critics,  is 
the  evidence  derived  from  a  treatise  De  Corpore 
et  Sanguine  Domini,  in  which  is  expressed,  without 
direct  reference  to  Scotus,  the  view  of  those  who 
regard  the  elements  as  '  signa  corporis  et  sanguinis,' 
a  more  mystic  conception  than  that  of  Ratramnus. 
Then  we  know  that  a  book  purporting  to  be  by 
Scotus  was  condemned  at  Vercelli,  and  that 

1  De  Praed.  Diss.  Post,  c.  xxxi. 

2  By  Noorden,  who  treats  the  whole  question  in  a  very  careful 
note,  p.  104. 

3  Printed  in  the  Spicilegium  of  D'Achery,  vol.  5.  p.  150  et  seq. 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament          93 

Berengarius  regarded  himself  as  a  follower  of 
Scotus,  with  whose  other  writings,  however,  he 
may  have  had  some  acquaintance. 

No  one  familiar  with  the  style  and  the  thoughts 
of  Scotus  can  believe  that  the  treatise  bearing  the 
name  of  Ratramnus  was  really  the  work  of  our 
philosopher.  In  an  uncritical  age,  however,  it  is 
not  impossible  that  men  two  generations  removed 
from  the  controversy,  or  even  some  late  contempor- 
aries of  those  who  had  begun  it,  may  have  been 
misled  into  the  notion  that  Scotus  had  written 
the  book,  especially  if  Ratramnus  and  his  friends 
wished  at  first,  from  prudential  motives,  to  keep 
the  authorship  secret 1.  Whether  there  were  two 
distinct  works  or  not  we  must  regard  as  an  open 
question.  But  we  cannot  doubt  that  if  there  were 
two,  they  must  have  been  very  dissimilar  in  tone 
and  contents. 

We  see,  then,  that  in  this,  as  in  the  predestin- 
arian  controversy,  the  ground  occupied  by  John 
the  Scot  was  beyond  the  reach  of  both  conflicting 
parties.  He  seems  equally  beyond  the  reach  of 
parties  that  have  striven  against  one  another  in 
disputes  of  a  somewhat  similar  character  in  later 
days.  Neither  Jansenists  nor  Jesuits,  Calvinists 
nor  Arminians,  can  claim  him  as  an  ally  in  their 
polemics  on  predestination ;  neither  those  who 

1  This  argument  is  used  by  Gieseler,  vol.  ii.  p.  286.  But  I  fail 
to  reconcile  it  with  the  fact  that  it  was  written  in  answer  to  questions 
asked  by  Charles  the  Bald. 


94 


Studies  in  John  the  Scot 


exalt  nor  those  who  disparage  the  efficacy  of  the 
Sacraments  can  find  consistent  support  in  his 
pages.  With  paradoxes  which  his  opponents  called 
'  ineptiae '  he  warded  off  the  attacks  of  foes  and  the 
misunderstanding  of  friends.  '  This  wicked  man,' 
some  might  aver,  '  would  limit  the  powers  of  the 
Almighty  by  saying  that  He  has  no  knowledge  of 
evil.'  '  How,'  we  imagine  him  to  reply,  '  can  power 
be  limited  by  absence  of  knowledge  of  the  non- 
existent ? '  '  He  denies  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  sin  or  its  punishment,  and  thereby  removes 
the  terrors  which  restrict  men  from  wrongdoing.' 
'  But  what  can  be  more  terrible  than  privation  of 
the  only  real  good  ?  What  more  fearful  punish- 
ment than  hopelessness  of  ever  attaining  to  the 
vision  of  God  ? '  And  in  the  second  controversy  : 
'  This  profane  man  says  that  the  holy  sacrament  is 
a  mere  sign  and  pledge,  not  a  divine  substance.' 
'  But  what  is  the  glorious  sun  in  heaven  but  a  type 
of  the  divine  glory?  This  whole  universe,  in  its 
beauty  and  harmony,  is  but  a  sign  and  symbol  of  the 
beauty  and  harmony  which  lie  beyond  all  sensual 
perception.'  Yet  if  those  who  attach  no  great 
value  to  external  ordinances  would  claim  the  Scot 
as  a  forerunner,  they  would  find  even  less  sympathy 
from  him  than  he  showed  for  their  opponents. 
When  reformers  had  done  their  utmost  to  weed  out 
superstitions  and  to  make  the  doctrines  and  rites  of 
the  popular  religion  as  simple  and  as  intelligible  as 
possible,  they  would  find  that  Scotus  and  his  friends 


Symbolism  and  Sacrament         95 

still  regarded  those  doctrines  as  symbolic  in  ex- 
pression, those  rites  as  mysterious  in  purport. 
For  to  such  thinkers  a  religion  without  symbolism 
and  mystery  would  be  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
To  the  pious  mind  of  this  type,  all  life  becomes 
sacramental,  not  by  the  degradation  of  the  institu- 
tions in  which  the  sacramental  idea  is  concentrated, 
but  by  raising  all  the  acts  and  passions  and  experi- 
ences of  humanity  into  an  intimate  relation  with 
the  supersensual  life.  The  Sacraments,  like  the 
whole  hierarchical  order,  serve  to  bring  the  lower 
into  communion  with  the  higher.  But  the  degree 
of  participation  depends  on  conditions  which  are 
individual  and  subjective.  '  As  many  as  are  the 
souls  of  the  faithful,  so  many  are  the  theophanies.' 
It  might  be  easy  to  show  that  religious  symbolism 
in  the  Middle  Ages  did  not  always  wear  so  sublime 
an  aspect.  Allegory  run  wild  is  destructive  to  clear 
thinking  and  to  critical  interpretation  of  words  and 
thoughts.  The  strained  interpretations  of  Scrip- 
ture, the  unscientific  explanation  of  ancient  usages 
to  which  Scotus  and  his  school  continually  resorted, 
are  apt  •  to  blind  us  to  some  of  their  strongest 
merits.  For,  after  all,  their  system  allowed  more 
free  scope  for  the  development  and  exercise  of  re- 
ligious thought  and  feeling  than  any  other  current 
in  their  own  or  possibly  in  any  other  time.  It  pre- 
cluded alike  a  slavish  attachment  to  mechanical 
observance  and  a  scanty  ritual  without  suggestions 
to  stimulate  the  spiritual  imagination.  While 


96  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

attributing  supreme  importance  to  theological 
knowledge,  it  was  quite  free  from  the  trammels  of 
a  doctrine  that,  professing  to  be  perfectly  clear,  and 
to  hint  at  nothing  beyond  its  own  categorical  state- 
ments, must  needs  become  unintelligible  or  even 
absurd  to  minds  that  realize  the  limits  of  definite 
assertion.  In  sacrament  and  symbol  there  is,  as 
Scotus  said,  both  a  temporary  and  a  permanent 
element,  and  the  perennial  life  can  most  safely  be 
embodied  in  forms  that  favour  the  periodical  re- 
discovery of  half-forgotten  truths. 


CHAPTER   V 

SCOTUS   AS   OPTIMIST 

'  But  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill.'— TENNYSON. 

IT  has  already  been  sufficiently  pointed  out  that 
the  principal  ecclesiastical  controversies  with  which 
the  name  of  Scotus  is  associated  were  none  of  his 
own  seeking,  nor  were  they  concerned  with  problems 
which  he  had  set  himself  to  solve.  The  questions 
whether  predestination  is  single  or  double,  and 
what  is  the  precise  change  undergone  by  the 
sacramental  elements  in  the  process  of  priestly 
consecration,  would  probably  never  have  troubled 
his  mind  if  they  had  not  been  directly  presented 
to  him  for  solution.  But  there  were  other  diffi- 
culties, some  of  them  quite  beyond  the  ordinary 
mental  walk  of  his  ecclesiastical  contemporaries,  to 
which  he  felt  himself  obliged  to  devote  the  full 
powers  of  his  intellect  and  many  hours  of  toilsome 
effort.  It  was  not,  as  a  rule,  the  greatest  of  all 

H 


98  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

questions,  in  an  undisguised  form,  that  drew 
controversial  works  from  the  pens  of  Hincmar, 
Prudentius,  or  Florus.  To  them,  for  instance, 
there  would  not  have  been  much  difficulty  in 
trying  to  conceive  how  an  unchangeable  Deity 
could  have  brought  into  existence  a  mutable  world, 
or  how  that  world  should  fail  to  reveal  in  every 
part  the  trace  of  its  divine  origin.  The  plain  man 
knows  that  if  he  were  in  the  place  of  the  Almighty, 
he  would  very  much  like  to  create  a  universe,  and 
that  if,  by  any  slip,  some  adverse  element  should 
have  intruded,  he  would  be  ready  with  some  device 
for  its  expulsion.  He  may  think  it  a  puzzling 
matter  to  decide  why,  in  this  world,  merit  often 
meets  with  scant  reward  and  vice  goes  unpunished  ; 
but  his  feeling  of  justice  is  satisfied  by  the  assurance 
that  some  day  all  cases  will  be  reheard  and  many 
dooms  reversed.  The  ancient  problems  concerning 
the  one  and  the  many,  rest  and  motion,  the  material 
and  the  spiritual  universe,  do  not  torment  him. 
The  plainest  man,  who  has  any  religion  at  all,  is 
bound  to  have  a  teleology  and  a  theodicy  of  some 
kind  or  another,  but  it  is  likely  to  be  crude  and 
inconsistent.  The  philosopher  must  have  his  in 
more  subtle  form,  yet  it  would  be  rash  to  say  that 
he,  more  than  his  humble  neighbour,  has  ever 
attained  to  consistency. 

The  difficulty  which  Scotus  felt  in  approaching 
the  problem  as  to  the  final  goal  of  all  things,  and 
the  way  in  which  it  is  reached,  appears  plainly  in 


Scotus  as  Optimist  99 

that  part  of  his  dialogue  between  master  and  pupil ' 
where  they  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  un- 
created, non-creating,  into  which  all  things  are 
finally  to  be  resolved.  The  master  gives  warning 
of  the  dangerous  sea,  strewn  with  wrecks  and  abound- 
ing in  unseen  dangers,  on  which  they  are  embark- 
ing, and  the  pupil,  who  presents  throughout  the 
type  of  the  indefatigable  inquirer,  declares  himself 
ready  to  venture,  and  prepared  to  eat  the  bread 
of  wisdom  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow.  It  seems  that 
Scotus  considered  the  whole  subject  of  creation,  in 
relation  to  its  first  cause,  to  the  primordial  ideas, 
and  to  the  microcosm  man,  as  quite  easy  to  deal 
with  in  comparison  with  that  of  the  final  con- 
summation. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  philosophic  stand- 
point occupied  by  Scotus  involved  an  optimistic 
vie w_ of  the  universe  generally.  For  he  held  that 
the  ground  and  substance  of  all  things  is  good— 
that  what  we  call  evil  is  merely  a  privation  of 
good,  and  has  no  positive  existence.  This  is  not 
what  is  commonly  signified  by  the  term  optimism, 
which  may  roughly  be  defined  as  a  belief  in  the 
ultimate  triumph  of  good  over  evil.  Some  such 
belief  is  very  earnestly  maintained  and  worked  out 
in  detail  in  various  parts  of  Scotus'  writings.  But 
the  nature  of  the  ultimate  triumph  expected  must 
differ  with  the  way  in  which  the  difference  between 
good  and  evil  is  regarded.  If  evil  is  only  apparent, 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iv.  2. 
H  2 


ioo          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

the  victory  of  good  consists  only  in  the  clear 
manifestation  of  the  good  as  being  alone  possessed 
of  reality.  This  is  practically  asserted  by  Scotus 
when  he  speaks  of  the  moment  of  final  consumma- 
tion as  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  truth  :  '  ilia 
die,  hoc  est  in  apparitione  veritatis  V 

Perhaps  it  might  be  possible  to  reduce  all  the 
processes  which  Scotus  traces  as  leading  to  the 
purification  and  perfection  of  the  whole  creation  into 
the  manifestation  of  hidden  truth.  Even  now, 
according  to  his  fundamental  principle,  God  is  all 
in  all,  but  God  is  not  realized  as  being  all  in  all 
except  by  a  few  highly  privileged  souls 2.  The 
annihilation  of  evil,  then,  from  this  idealistic 
standpoint,  is  nothing  but  the  clearing  away  of 
intellectual  or  spiritual  obscurity.  Even  the 
eternal  punishment  of  wilful  sin  seems  to  lie  in 
the  revelation  of  its  futility. 

But  besides  the  Christian  or  theistic  need  'to 
justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man,'  or  the  more 
vaguely  human  desire  to  show  that  this  universe 
is  the  best  possible  of  universes,  Scotus  feels  the 
necessity  of  bringing  into  his  philosophy  the  old 
theory  of  cyclic  revolutions.  The  ideas  of  moral 
restitution  and  of  a  completed  harmony  are  blended 
in  his  mind.  The  motion  and  return  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  the  regular  recurrence  of  tides  and  seasons, 
the  tendency  of  all  things  in  nature  towards  some 
end  which  is  also  a  beginning,  symbolizes  or  is 
1  De  Div.  Nat.  v.  32.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  20. 


Scotus  as  Optimist  101 

identical  with  the  strivings  of  man  towards  a 
blessed  and  eternal  life.  Even  in  the  arts  the 
same  tendency  is  manifest.  Dialectic  revolves 
around  being,  arithmetic  around  the  monad, 
geometry  around  the  figure.  The  resolution  of  all 
things  into  their  original  elements  is  the  whole 
process  of  nature.  Applied  to  man,  it  signifies  the 
return  of  his  being  into  God.  But  since,  for  man, 
to  participate  in  God  is  to  live  in  perpetual  con- 
templation of  the  Divine  glory,  and  since  the 
substance  of  all  things  is  eternal,  the  vision  of 
the  beatified  universe  with  which  Scotus  presents 
us  is  not  that  of  a  vast  sea  in  which  the  peculiar 
qualities  of  all  things  are  absorbed  in  a  never- 
ending  monotony,  but  of  a  perfectly  harmonious 
composition  in  which  all  creatures  live  in  unity 
yet  without  confusion  of  individual  being. 

If  we  were  in  the  position  of  the  '  Discipulus ' 
there  is  a  question  we  might  desire  to  ask.  Granted 
that  all  things  move  in  cycles  and  return  to  their 
original  elements,  yet  their  return  does  not  result 
in  a  perpetual  quiescence,  but  rather  in  renewed 
movement.  Following  the  analogy,  when  all  things 
are  resolved  into  the  primary  cause  of  all,  will 
there  be  again  a  fresh  departure,  a  new  creation, 
perhaps  another  apparent  reign  of  evil,  only  to  be 
overcome  by  another  procession  or  incarnation  of 
the  creative  Logos 1  ?  But  we  may  imagine  the 

1  I  have  known  a  clever  child  who  asked  whether,  if  the  planets 
were  inhabited,  a  Christ  had  died  in  each. 


102          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

'  Magister '  replying,  with  scornful  wrath,  that  we 
had  not  yet  diverted  our  niinds  from  temporal  and 
even  spacial  relations,  which  have  no  application 
in  speculations  of  this  kind.  Or  he  might  tell  us 
that  this  was  a  mystery  into  which  we  were  not 
able  to  penetrate. 

Another  difficulty  might  arise  from  the  very  fact 
that  time  is  no  more  than  a  condition  of  our  cogni- 
tion of  material  things.  It  may  seem  to  us  that 
as  no  series — however  numerous — of  intermediate 
beings  could  bridge  the  distance  between  creator 
and  created,  the  infinite  one  and  the  finite  many, 
so  no  number  of  aeons  of  perfectly  and  evidently 
harmonious  order  could  obliterate  the  fact  that 
there  was  ever,  even  in  semblance,  an  element  of 
discord.  If,  for  one  second,  any  man  or  demon  felt 
one  unsocial  instinct  or  performed  one  malicious 
act,  that  moment  would  be  as  destructive  of  the 
theory  of  the  '  best  possible  universe '  as  if  the 
world  had  lain  for  ages  in  the  power  of  the  Wicked 
One.  This  objection  might  seem  to  be  met  by 
assigning  a  purely  negative  character  to  evil,  but 
to  some  of  us  it  may  appear  that  the  difficulty  is 
thereby  only  pushed  one  step  back. 

One  other  interesting  point  in  connexion  with 
sin  and  its  annihilation,  as  expounded  by  Scotus, 
may  be  pointed  out  here  before  we  take  up  the 
main  line  of  his  theory.  It  is  well  known  that 
the  later  Graeco-Romans,  who  drew  from  their 
philosophy  maxims  for  daily  practical  life,  especially 


Scotus  as  Optimist  103 

the  Stoics,  such  as  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Epictetus, 
sought  to  soften  the  resentment  naturally  aroused 
against  unsocial  and  unreasonable  people  by  in- 
sisting on  the  involuntary  character  of  all  wrong- 
doing. '  Thou  art  injuring  thyself,  my  child,'  says 
Marcus  in  imagination  to  a  man  who  is  seeking  to 
injure  him.  For  if  the  worst  of  men  could  realize 
the  beauty  of  goodness,  he  would,  by  his  innate 
desire  for  happiness,  seek  it  alone,  and  not  deprive 
himself  of  so  great  a  good.  Now  Scotus,  following 
the  words  of  St.  Augustine,  shows  how  all  men, 
bad  and  good,  desire  being,  happy  being,  and 
perpetual  being,  and  avoid  death  and  pain.  If  they 
fall  into  death  and  pain,  it  must  be  by  error,  to 
which  he  assigns  a  large,  though  not  the  whole 
share,  in  human  depravity.  But  though,  in  a  sense, 
he  would  make  error  the  source  of  evil,  no  one  can 
be  stronger  than  Scotus  in  asserting  that  sin  comes 
of  self-will,  of  a  turning  from  the  true  principle  of 
man  to  self  as  goal  and  centre  \  There  is,  perhaps, 
no  contradiction  here.  Sin  may  be  chiefly  due  to 
ignorance,  yet  that  ignorance  may  be  voluntary. 

In  the  part  of  his  treatise  De  Divisione  Naturae, 
which  deals  with  the  restitution  of  all  things, 
Scotus  transcribes,  even  more  freely  than  in  other 
parts  of  his  writings,  copious  quotations  from  the 
Fathers — chiefly  from  the  Greeks — Gregory  of 
Nyssa,  Maximus,  Epiphanius,  Origen  (with  whom 
he  is  here  in  intimate  sympathy),  and  others, 
1  De  Div.  Nat.  ii.  25,  and  De  praedentinatione,  6. 


104          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

though  in  two  places  where  he  quotes  Ambrose  J, 
he  seems  to  show  an  almost  nervous  fear  of  be- 
traying his  preference  for  the  Greeks.  Augustine, 
of  course,  is  frequently  cited.  Yet  we  constantly 
feel,  especially  with  the  more  lengthy  quotations, 
that  they  are  rather  employed  to  illustrate  than  to 
support  the  philosopher's  views.  Many  causes 
other  than  philosophic  necessity  had  led  the  early 
Christian  writers,  and  those  of  the  fourth  century, 
to  dwell  on  the  topic  of  the  Last  Judgement,  and  of 
the  new  heaven  and  new  earth  wherein  righteous- 
ness should  dwell.  And  as  it  is  impossible  to  dwell 
on  such  subjects  without  a  plentiful  employment  of 
imagery,  we  may  often  feel  that  in  transcribing  or 
even  expanding  their  words,  Scotus  is  interpreting 
them  '  translative.'  This  may  account  for  some, 
though  certainly  not  for  all,  of  the  inconsistencies 
which  we  find  in  treatises  designed  for  men  who 
set  a  high  value  on  authority  by  one  who  was 
endeavouring  to  weld  together  material  employed 
by  the  various  authorities  of  Scripture,  patristic 
tradition,  and  the  principles  of  the  later  Greek 
philosophies. 

It  is  impossible,  in  examining  this  part  of  the 
doctrine  of  Scotus,  to  distinguish  clearly  between 
the  restoration  of  the  Creation  to  primitive  unity 
and  simplicity  and  the  recovery  by  fallen  human 
nature  of  its  pristine  dignity.  But,  indeed,  his 
conception  of  man  as  the  microcosm,  as  an  epitome 

1  De.  Die.  Nat.  iv.  17;  and  also  v.  8. 


Scot  us  as  Optimist  105 

of  that  thought  of  God  which  constitutes  the  whole 
creation,  renders  any  such  distinction  superfluous. 
Restitution  in  the  wider  sense  is  comprised  in  the 
redemption  of  mankind  and  the  purification  of 
human  souls  from  sin.  If  we  ask  why  such  resti- 
tution is  required,  what  signs  there  are  of  imper- 
fection in  the  universe  as  we  know  it,  we  do  not 
obtain  such  an  answer  as  a  modern  thinker  might 
give,  in  the  prevalence  of  pain  among  animals,  the 
apparent  loss  of  noble  types,  and  the  like.  Rather 
the  imperfection  is  seen  in  the  manifold  character 
of  things — since  the  one  is  ever  superior  to  the 
many — and  in  what  is  regarded  as  the  merely 
contingent  existence  of  material  things,  since  sub- 
stance is  superior  to  accident.  '  We  believe,'  he 
says,  'that  the  end  of  this  sensible  world  will  be 
nothing  else  than  a  return  into  God  and  into  its 
primordial  causes,  in  which  it  naturally  subsists  V 
And  again 2 :  '  It  (the  creation)  begins  in  a  sense 
to  be,  not  in  that  it  subsists  in  its  primordial 
causes,  but  in  that  it  begins  to  appear  from 
temporal  causes.  For  temporal  causes  I  call  the 
qualities  and  quantities  and  all  else  that  come  to 
belong  as  accidents  to  substances  in  time  by 
generation.  And  thus  of  these  substances  it  is 
said  "  there  was  a  time  when  they  were  not  "  ;  for 
they  did  not  always  appear  in  their  accidents. 
In  like  manner  they  may  even  now  be  said  to  be, 
and  they  are,  and  shall  be  in  truth  and  for  ever. 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  ii.  n.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  15. 


io6  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

But   in  so  far  as   they   are    said   to  be   in   their 
accidents,  which  come  to  them  from  without,  they 
have  no  real  nor  perpetual  being.     Therefore  they 
shall   be  dissolved  into  those  things  from  which 
they  were  taken,  in  which  in  truth  and  eternally 
they  have  their  being,  when  every  substance  shall 
be  purged  from  all  corruptible  accidents,  and  shall 
be  delivered  from  all  that  does  not  belong  to  the 
condition    of  its  proper  nature  ;    beautiful  in  its 
peculiar  native  excellences,  in  its  entire  simplicity, 
and,  in  the  good  man,  adorned  with  the  gifts  of 
grace,  being  glorified    through  the  contemplation 
of  the  eternal  blessedness,  beyond   every  nature, 
even  its  own,  and  turned  into  God  Himself,  being 
made  God,  not  by  nature,  but  by  grace.'     In  this 
passage   Scotus   seems   unconsciously   to  slide  off 
from  the  consideration  of  the  greater   to  that  of 
the  lesser  world,  and  finally  to  touch  on  the  idea — 
to  which  we   shall  return — that  for  the   chosen 
among    mankind    something    better     even     than 
restoration  to  primitive  purity  is  in  store. 

Before  we  pass  to  consider  the  manner  in  which 
human  nature  is  to  be  restored,  we  may  notice  that 
Scotus  has  a  notable  tenderness  for  the  animal 
creation,  and  refuses  to  accept  the  authority  of 
those  teachers  who  would  deny  an  immortal  soul 
to  beasts.  He  is  inclined  to  think1  that  the 
intelligence  and  the  social  qualities  of  the  nobler 
animals  are  due  to  some  measure  of  participation 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iii.  39. 


Scotus  as  Optimist  107 

in  the  divine  life,  which  they  cannot  eternally 
lose,  and  that  the  contrary  opinion  has  only  been 
preached  as  a  warning  to  men  prone  to  degrade 
themselves  and  become  like  '  the  brutes  that 
perish.' 

To  come  to  man  the  microcosm,  the  human 
trinity,  made  in  the  image  of  God,  but  fallen  from 
its  original  glory,  we  have  already  seen  that  Scotus 
attributes  that  fall  to  a  self-willed  turning  away 
from  man's  proper  nature  and  first  principle  of 
being.  In  following  the  story  in  Genesis,  he  gives 
an  allegoric  interpretation  to  its  several  parts, 
following  in  general  the  commentaries  of  the 
Fathers,  especially  Gregory  of  Nyssa  and  Maximus 
the  Monk,  though  sometimes  showing  how  the 
authorities  differ  and  which  view  he  personally 
prefers.  It  may  seem  superfluous  to  say  that  the 
Fall  is  not  regarded  as  an  event  in  time,  nor 
Paradise  as  a  definite  locality.  Again  and  again 
he  recurs  to  the  idea,  on  which  Maximus  also 
liked  to  dwell,  that  man  before  the  Fall,  or  man 
according  to  his  divine  nature,  was  sexless.  The 
division  into  male  and  female  is  a  defect  in 
humanity.  The  story  of  the  forbidden  fruit  is 
interpreted  as  the  leading  away  of  the  mind 
(=  the  man)  by  sensibility  (  =  the  woman),  so  as  to 
seek  pleasure  in  the  things  of  sense  and  not  in  pure 
wisdom l.  The  punishments  inflicted  have  a  hidden 
meaning : — '  In  sorrow  shalt  thou  bring  forth 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iv.  18  et  seq. 


io8  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

children,'  points  to  the  efforts  necessary  for  attain- 
ing knowledge  ;  ;  thy  desire  shall  be  to  thy  husband, 
and  he  shall  rule  over  thee,'  promises  the  ultimate 
subjugation  of  sense  by  reason.  The  labours 
imposed  on  the  man  have  a  purgatorial  end,  and 
'  thou  shalt  return '  is  spoken  in  hope.  The  return 
is  not  by  way  of  new  creation,  but  through  a 
cleansing  process,  such  as  that  which  purifies  from 
leprosy.  When  man  can  contemplate  the  Divine 
Goodness,  he  attains  restoration,  for  the  image 
remains  in  his  nature  even  after  the  Fall l. 

It  is  evident  that  Scotus  is  not  among  those  who>, 
regard  matter  as  the  one  cause  of  evil,  but  he 
partly  agrees  with  them  in  that  he  regards  the 
preference  of  the  material  to  the  spiritual  as  being 
at  the  root  of  all  mischief,  and  also  holds  the 
absorption  of  body  in  spirit  as  a  necessary  step 
towards  rectification.  Nevertheless  he  affirms,  in 
his  peculiar  sense,  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection 
of  the  body,  by  which  he  would  imply  2  not  the 
perpetuation  of  what  is  merely  sensible  and 
fictitious,  but  the  resolution  of  all  that  has  any 
being  at  all  into  purer  elements.  The  '  death  of 
the  saints '  which  is  '  precious  in  the  sight  of  the 
Lord '  is  the  absorption  of  the  human  soul  in  the 
Divine  3,  for  the  death  of  the  body  is  the  first  step  ' 
towards  the  liberation  of  the  soul 4. 

The  means   by  which  the  general  restitution  is 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  v.  6.  2  Ibid.,  v.  25. 

*  Ibid.,  v.  21.  *  Ibid.,  v.  7. 


Scotus  as  Optimist  109 

effected  is,  of  course,  the  incarnation,  or,  more 
properly,  the  humanizing  of  the  Logos.  The 
doctrine  is  set  forth  in  several  forms.  Christ  is  to 
be  regarded  as  a  sacrifice  which  has  been  effectual 
for  all  \  as  a  priest  and  mediator,  as  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant  full  of  sacred  treasures.  But  generally 
it  is  as  the  Logos  entering  into  human  nature,  and 
thereby  into  the  nature  of  all  things  which  have 
been  created  in  man,  and  then  returning  to  the 
Father  or  First  Principle,  that  He  is  regarded  as 
bringing  about  the  final  union.  'He  went  forth 
from  the  Father  and  came  into  the  world,  that  is, 
He  took  upon  Him  that  human  nature  in  which 
the  whole  world  subsists  ;  for  there  is  nothing  iii 
the  world  that  is  not  comprehended  in  human 
nature ;  and  again,  He  left  the  world  and  went 
to  the  Father,  that  is,  He  exalted  that  human 
nature  which  He  had  received  above  all  things 
visible  and  invisible,  above  all  heavenly  powers, 
above  all  that  can  be  said  or  understood,  uniting 
it  to  His  deity,  in  which  He  is  equal  to  the 
Father2.' 

If  we  ask  whether  the  restoration  of  human 
nature  carries  with  it  the  salvation  of  every  human 
soul,  we  cannot  obtain  a  perfectly  clear  answer,  or 
rather,  we  obtain  answers  which  seem  mutually 
contradictory.  For  the  doctrine  of  the  eternal 
punishment  of  the  wicked  is  even  harder  to 
reconcile  with  the  teleological  principles  of  Scotus 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  v.  36,  p.  981.  "  Ibid.,  v.  25. 


no          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

than  is  that  of  a  corporeal  resurrection.  We  have 
already  seen,  in  considering  his  part  in  the 
predestinarian  controversy,  how  Scotus  had  given 
great  offence  in  some  quarters  by  practically 
eliminating  the  arbitrary  and  also  the  material 
element  in  the  final  punishment.  Yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  seems  to  spoil  the  harmony  of  his  own 
system,  by  admitting  as  forms,  or  perhaps  illustra- 
tions of  divinely  inflicted  penalties,  both  a  tardy 
and  too  late  repentance  and  a  consuming  vexation 
at  the  thought  of  complete  failure  in  life.  For  if 
repentance  is  purgatorial  in  character,  as  Scotus 
seems  to  admit,  and  if  it  is  accompanied  by 
acquiescence  in  a  just  doom,  it  falls  far  short  of  the 
notion  of  eternal  torment.  And  the  anger  at 
having  failed  in  evil  projects,  such  as  he  ascribes 
to  tyrants  like  Herod,  who  are  reluctantly  com- 
pelled to  serve  a  good  purpose,  is  surely  a  species 
of  that  malitia  which,  we  are  told,  is  with  miseria 
to  be  utterly  destroyed.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  these  suggestions  are  of  an  apologetic  character, 
and  do  not  fit  into  the  scheme  as  a  whole.  And 
indeed,  elsewhere,  Scotus  speaks  of  the  parable  of 
Dives  and  Lazarus  as  being  of  the  nature  of  an 
allegory.  What  he  contemplates,  as  far  as,  in 
these  highflown  speculations,  he  can  be  said  to 
have  a  clear  notion  of  the  looked-for  goal,  is  a 
perfectly  ordered  universe,  in  which  no  sin  or 
desire  to  sin  remains,  and  wherein  each  living 
being  enjoys  that  proportion  of  divine  wisdom  and 


Scotus  as  Optimist  m 

happiness  for  -which  it  is  fitted.  The  home  is  of 
'  many  mansions.'  All  are  saved,  though  not  all 
are  deified.  Again  and  again  the  doctrine  is 
insisted  upon  that  no  substance  can  ever  be  lost. 
'  The  thoughts  of  the  wicked '  perish,  because  they 
are  but  vanity.  But  in  their  innermost  being  even 
the  devils  are  good  in  that  they  are,  and  a  sugges- 
tion is  made,  though  not  followed  up,  that  Origen 
may  be  right  as  to  the  final  conversion  of  Satan 
and  his  ministers. 

The  consummation  of  all  things  involves,  how- 
ever, for  man,  or  rather  for  chosen  spirits  among 
men,  something  far  exceeding  the  blamelessness  of 
the  first  Paradise.  For  though,  in  many  passages, 
it  is  made  clear  that  final  restoration  is  to  comprise 
the  return  of  all  things  into  God,  there  is  a  special 
sense  in  which  holy  men,  after  the  discipline  of 
life,  are  to  be  deified  and  brought  to  perpetual 
contemplation  of  the  highest  theophany,  or  perhaps, 
even  above  it.  In  a  chapter  near  the  end  of  the 
treatise  De  Divisione  Naturae,  we  have  the  steps 
of  the  ascent  summarized  by  way  of  recapitulation. 
There  are  three  steps  in  the  progress  by  which 
effects  generally  are  brought  back  to  their  causes, 
four  by  which  restored  humanity  is  brought  into 
perfect  unity,  three  more  by  which  the  perfected 
and  unified  soul  is  brought  into  the  incomprehen- 
sible light1.  First  is  the  change  of  all  bodies 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  v.  39 ;  cf.  the  fivefold  theoria  of  the  rational 
creation  in  v.  32,  and  also  v.  8. 


H2          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

capable  of  sensual  perception  into  their  spiritual 
causes1.  Next  comes  the  restoration  of  human 
nature  to  its  primitive  condition,  by  the  divine 
mercy,  through  the  saving  work  of  Christ.  Thirdly 
comes  the  sevenfold  way  by  which  the  divinely- 
chosen  are  to  reach  their  ultimate  goal.  There  are 
four  processes  of  unification  of  a  lower  kind :  the 
changes  of  earthly  body  into  vital  motion  ;  of  vital 
motion  into  sense ;  of  sense  into  reason,  and  of 
reason  into  soul.  The  three  higher  changes  are 
of  soul  into  knowledge  of  all  things  posterior  to 
God  ;  of  knowledge  into  wisdom,  or  close  contemp- 
lation of  the  truth ;  finally  the  absorption  of  the 
purified  souls  thus  identified  with  purest  intellect,'' 
into  the  obscurities  of  impenetrable  light,  wherein 
lie  hidden  the  causes  of  all  things.  The  octave  is 
then  complete,  and  the  consummation  attained 
which  was  signified  by  the  resurrection  of  the 
Lord  on  the  eighth  day. 

The  final  absorption  of  soul,  apparently  of  all     \ 
consciousness,  in  the  Supreme  Unity,  has  struck/^ 
many  writers  as  being  originally  an  Indian,  or  at  \ 
least  an  Oriental  conception.      There  is,  however, 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  Scotus  borrowed,  even 
indirectly,  from  Indian   sages,  and  possibly  their 
Nirvana,    however    differently    interpreted     from 
different  points  of  view,  would  be  found  dissimilar 

1  In  v.  8,  in  the  case  of  human  bodies,  the  dissolution  of  body 
into  the  four  elements  and  its  resurrection  are  made  to  precede  this 
change. 


Scotus  as  Optimist  113 

in  many  respects  from  his.  It  certainly  cannot  be 
confused  with  annihilation,  rather  is  it  to  be  re- 
garded as  an  entering  into  real  existence.  It  should 
be  taken,  perhaps,  in  consistency,  to  involve  the 
elimination  of  all  personal  qualities  and  individual 
life.  But  in  all  his  works,  Scotus  guards  against  the 
assumption  that  any  confusion  of  separate  existences 
is  implied  in  the  ultimate  union  of  all  things.  It 
is  harmony,  not  monotony,  that  seems  to  him  the 
starting-point  and  the  goal  of  creation.  The  seventh 
step  seems  to  go  further  than  any  ever  taken,  in 
the  Dionysian  system,  by  the  most  exalted  member 
of  the  divine  hierarchy  ;  since  contemplation,  and 
that  not  directly  of  the  divine,  but  of  a  theophany, 
is  the  occupation  of  the  first  order,  and  if  there  is 
an  advance  beyond  the  contemplative  life  into  that 
which  is  '  dark  from  excess  of  light,'  man  must 
have  risen  immeasurably  above  all  other  creatures. 
Probably  Scotus  would  not  have  admitted  such 
a  conclusion.  In  any  case,  with  the  enraptured 
description  of  the  apotheosis  of  the  glorified  soul, 
the  'Magister '  ends  what  he  calls  the  recapitulation 
of  this  work — a  description  in  which  his  readers 
can  by  no  means  concur — without  listening  to  any 
more  questions  from  his  pupil.  He  only  adds,  by 
way  of  apology,  that  his  task  has  been  a  very 
difficult  one,  that  in  this  dusky  life  human  studies 
must  always  be  imperfect,  that  truth  is  ever  liable 
to  be  misunderstood,  and  that  all  we  can  do  is  to 
wait.  'Let  each  one  make  the  most  of  his  own 

I 


H4          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

view,  until  that  light  shall  come  which  turns  into 
darkness  the  light  of  those  who  deal  falsely  in 
wisdom  and  turns  to  light  the  darkness  of  those 
who  discern  things  rightly  V 

1  DC  Die.  Nat.  v.  40. 


8COTUS   AS   SUBJECTIVE   IDEALIST 

'  Cogito,  ergo  sum.'— DESCABTES. 

'  Dnm  ergo  dico  intelligo  me  esse .  .  .  et  me  esse,  et  posse  intelli- 
gere  me  esse,  et  intelligere  me  esse  demonstro.' 

SCOTUS,  De  Division e  Naturae,  i.  48. 

EVEN  those  who  make  but  a  slight  acquaintance 
with  the  literature  relating  to  John  the  Scot  become 
impressed  with  the  fact  that  in  so  far  as  he  is 
generally  regarded  by  students  and  historians  of 
philosophy  with  respect  and  interest,  it  is  because 
of  the  analogy  that  may  often  be  traced  between 
his  views  and  those  of  quite  modern  thinkers.  We 
have  already  seen  how  in  some  ways  he  figures  as 
a  link  in  the  chain  between  Greek  philosophy  and 
mediaeval  thought.  We  have  seen  how  the  neces- 
sities of  his  position  forced  him  to  take  up  a  decided 

1  For  Scotus'  theory  of  cognition,  and  his  bearings  towards  con- 
temporary and  later  thought,  see  the  books  mentioned  before, 
especially  Christlieb,  the  Histoire  de  la  Philosophic  Scolastique  of 
Haureau ;  the  Geschichte  der  LogiJc  im  Abendlande  by  Prantl,  vol.  ii ; 
the  History  of  Philosophy  by  Ueberweg,  &c. 

I  2 


n6          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

attitude  in  some  of  the  great  theological  controver- 
sies of  his  day.  To  follow  his  doctrines  down  into 
later  times,  and  see  how  far  they  anticipate  the 
principles  of  transcendentalists  or  of  sceptics  belong- 
ing to  our  own  times,  has  been  a  fascinating  task  to 
some  writers1.  But  as  no  one  would  suppose  Scotus 
to  have  directly  influenced  any  modern  school,  that 
task  may  seem  rather  a  field  for  speculative  in- 
genuity and  for  practical  reflection  than  an  essential 
part  of  an  historical  sketch.  The  philosophic  dis- 
putes of  the  centuries  which  immediately  succeeded 
that  of  Scotus  might  well  come  within  the  field 
of  any  student  of  the  man  and  his  times,  but  even 
here  it  is  not  easy  to  see  exactly  how  far  his  in- 
fluence extended.  For  in  metaphysics  as  in  theo- 
logy, he  was  strangely  misunderstood  and  accused 
of  spreading  doctrines  exactly  opposite  in  tenor  to 
those  which  he  was  incessantly  proclaiming. 

The  great  danger  in  trying  to  realize  the  stand- 
point in  logic  and  metaphysics  of  a  man  who  lived 
not  only  in  a  distant  age,  but  in  an  age  which  seems, 
in  a  sense,  off  the  path  of  continuous  human  pro- 
gress, is  lest  we  should  read  the  present  into  the 
past,  and  attribute  to  the  words  of  an  ancient  sage 
meanings  which  did  not  belong  to  them  till  a  mil- 
lenium  later.  Still,  the  essential  problems  are  there, 
and  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  a  rush  of  sympathy 
towards  those  who  have  thought  our  thoughts,  or 

1  Notably  to  Christlieb,  who  traces  analogies  between  Scotus  and 
Kant,  Hegel,  Fichte,  Schelling,  &c. 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist       117 

something  like  them,  long  before.  If  the  analogy 
between  Scotus  and  Hegel  is  only  evident  to  a  few 
select  minds,  the  resemblance  to  Descartes — as  in 
the  words  printed  at  the  head  of  this  chapter — must 
strike  the  most  casual  reader.  Yet  we  can  hardly 
fail,  on  further  inspection,  to  see  that  the  meaning 
of  Scotus  and  that  of  Descartes  are  not  identical. 

Still  if,  without  drawing  a  close  comparison 
between  Scotus  and  any  particular  philosopher  of 
modern  times,  we  collect  our  general  impressions 
from  a  perusal  of  his  writings,  we  find  much  that, 
without  any  violence  or  perversion,  seems  to  lend 
itself  to  modern  modes  of  thought  and  expression. 
We  read  of  an  unknown  God  and  an  unknown  self, 
the  existence  of  which  is  postulated  in  every  thought 
and  act,  yet  respecting  which  nothing  can  be 
asserted.  We  have  a  phenomenal  world,  which 
has  reality  in  so  far,  and  only  so  far,  as  it  is  the 
object  of  cognition  by  intelligence.  We  see  recog- 
nized a  principle  of  relativity  in  all  knowledge, 
which  ever  and  anon  checks  us  in  saying  '  this  is 
so,'  to  make  us  add  '  or  so  it  is  to  me.'  But  we 
are  only  safe,  in  our  attempt  to  sketch,  however 
roughly,  the  views  of  Scotus  as  to  the  mind  in  re- 
lation to  a  world  of  actual  or  possible  experience, 
if  we  keep  as  closely  as  possible  to  his  own  words 
and  to  definite  citations  from  his  works1. 

1  If  on  the  metaphysical  side  Scotus  is  claimed  by  the  German 
Transcendentalists,  he  might,  in  his  religious  symbolism,  seem  to 
foreshadow  the  present-day  school  of  liberal  French  Protestantism, 
especially  as  represented  by  Dr.  Sabatier. 


n8          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Now  there  is  a  curious  passage  near  the  be- 
ginning of  De  Divisione  Naturae  l  which  seems 
to  be  taken  by  commentators  as  a  theory  of 
cognition.  He  has  begun  his  dialogue  by  giving 
a  very  wide  interpretation  to  Nature,  so  as  to  make 
it  include  things  which  are  not  as  well  as  things 
which  are.  He  then  goes  on  to  discuss  the  difference 
between  the  existent  and  the  non-existent.  It  is 
to  be  noticed  that  he  seems  to  include  in  '  Nature  ' 
that  only  which  has  at  least  potential  or  phenomenal 
existence.  At  first  sight  he  may  seem  to  be  clearing 
the  ground  by  getting  rid  of  Non-being  altogether, 
but  this  is  evidently  not  the  case,  as  some  of  the 
highest  objects  of  thought  are  included  under  those 
of  which  existence  cannot  be  predicated.  Neither 
is  he  giving  us  a  cross-classification  to  be  used 
alternately  with  that  into  creating  -  uncreated, 
creating-created,  created-non-creating,  and  uncre- 
ated-non-creating.  For  there  is  no  homogeneity 
in  his  new  principles  of  distinction.  It  is  not  five  -> 
classes,  but  five  modes  of  regarding  things,  with 
respect  to  being  and  non-being,  that  he  is  giving 
us.  These  sections  are  therefore  much  cited  by 
those  who  treat  Scotus  from  the  metaphysical 
point  of  view.  They  do  not  seem,  however,  to  con- 
stitute an  important  part  of  the  treatise,  and  are 
not,  I  think,  ever  referred  to  again. 

In  the  first  place,  we  distinguish  as  being  all  that 
can  be  an  object  of  corporeal  sensation  or  of  intellec- 

1  i.  3-61  with  which  cf.  iii.  2. 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist        119 

tual  perception.  This  would  exclude  on  the  one 
hand  God,  who  cannot  be  comprehended  by  mind 
or  sense,  and  to  whom,  following  Dionysius,  we 
assign  superesse ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  any 
absence  or  privation  of  discernible  qualities  (such 
as  blindness,  or,  he  would  probably  add,  sin),  unless 
we  consider  them  as  somehow  included  in  those 
things  of  which  they  are  the  privations  or  opposites. 
The  second  distinction  is  harder  to  grasp.  It 
is  based  on  the  arrangement  of  all  things  in 
a  hierarchical  order  (for  which  we  are  again 
referred  to  Dionysius)  according  to  their  partici- 
pation in  the  universal  life,  from  the  highest 
spiritual  intelligence  to  the  lowest  degree  of 
nutritive  and  productive  activity.  If  we  define 
any  of  these  ranks  which  come  in  consecutive 
order,  we  deny  with  regard  to  the  superior  what 
we  affirm  of  the  inferior,  and  vice  versa.  For 
example,  if  we  distinguish  a  man  from  an  angel,  it 
is  by  making  definitions  of  each  and  affirming  in 
each  case  of  the  one  what  we  deny  of  the  other. 
Thus  at  the  very  top,  and  again  at  the  very  bottom 
of  the  scale,  we  come  to  the  end  of  the  region  of 
being,  since  what  is  affirmed  or  defied  of  the  order 
cannot  be  denied  or  affirmed  of  a  higher  order  in 
the  one  case,  of  a  lower  order  in  the  other.  Now 
the  higher  can  comprehend  the  lower  and  also  itself, 
but  the  lower  cannot  comprehend  the  higher.  The 
comprehension  of  self  as  one  of  a  series,  differing 
alike  from  those  above  and  those  below,  seems  to 


120          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

be  taken  as  equivalent  to  self-consciousness.  The 
capability  of  being  defined  in  a  particular  way 
seems  to  imply  a  condition  of  being  in  which  any 
creature  is  contained  within  intelligible  limits.  We 
shall  return  to  Scotus'  conception  of  definition,  or 
locus,  later  on.  Meantime,  we  may  take  this  mode 
as  a  distinction  between  cognized  and  cognizable 
on  the  one  hand,  and  neither-cognized-nor-cogniz- 
\  able  on  the  other,  and  observe  how  thought  and 
\  being  are  never  dissociated  in  his  mind. 

The  third  mode  of  distinction  is  between  the 
actually  and  evidently  existing  and  that  of  which 
the  being  is  as  yet  only  potential — as  all  men  were 
potentially  created  in  Adam,  and  the  plant  exists 
potentially  in  the  seed. 

The  fourth  way  is  that  of  philosophers  who 
attribute  real  existence  to  that  which  is  intellec- 
tually discernible,  immutable,  and  incorruptible, 
and  deny  the  actual  being  of  what  is  material  and 
subject  to  change  and  decay. 

The  fifth  is  a  theological  distinction.  Any  creature 
which,  like  man,  has  fallen  away  from  the  divine 
type  in  which  it  was  created,  has,  in  a  sense,  lost 
its  being,  though  restoration  of  the  type  and  of 
essential  being  have,  for  man,  been  made  possible. 

Though  these  distinctions  are  not  entirely  free 
from  obscurity,  they  seem  generally  to  be  con- 
sistent with  the  principle  that  we  are  to  acknow- 
ledge, as  having  some  measure  of  existence,  all 
that  of  which,  with  or  without  the  medium  of  the 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist        121 

senses,  the  mind  can  take  cognizance.  And  we 
also  seem  to  have,  though  not  so  clearly  stated 
here  as  elsewhere,  the  identification  of  real  existence 
with  self-consciousness.  The  views  here  set  forth 
would  not  enable  us  to  call  Scotus  a  subjective 
idealist  unless  we  could  proceed  to  show  that  he 
considers  all  that  we  call  the  world  of  things  as 
not  only  existing  for  the  mind,  but  as  being  ac- 
tually in  the  mind,  and  having  no  kind  of  being 
except  in  relation  to  mind. 

We  have  pointed  out  that  Scotus  taught  the 
doctrine  of  an  unknown  God  and  of  an  unknown 
self,  both  of  which  are  in  a  sense  objects  of  human 
consciousness,  though  neither  is  circumscribed  by 
human  intelligence.  Let  us  notice  here  that  he 
does  not  acknowledge  a  third  unknown  in  Matter 
existing  apart  from  Mind.  The  '  nothing '  out  of 
which,  according  to  the  Fathers,  all  things  have 
been  made,  is  only  to  be  taken  as  meaning  negation 
or  privation  of  being1.  Formless  matter  is  not 
perceptible  by  sense  or  intelligence,  and  the  forms 
by  which  it  becomes  apparent  are  themselves  in- 
corporeal in  nature.  The  four  elements,  by  the 
admixture  of  which  all  bodies  are  created,  pro- 
ceed from  the  primordial  causes  which  have  their 
being  in  the  Word  or  Wisdom  of  God 2.  Or  again, 
what  we  call  matter  or  body  is  recognized  and 
differentiated  by  means  of  a  concourse  of  accidents, 
and  the  accidents  which  make  up  the  categories, 
1  De  Die.  Nat.  iii.  5.  2  Ibid.,  14. 


122  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

as  well  as  the  categories  themselves,  which  are 
accidents  of  owia,  are  incorporeal  and  intelligible. 
Therefore  in  any  interpretation  or  description  of 
the  sensible  world,  we  have  not  to  do  with  anything 
beyond  the  limits  of  pure  mind.  This  may  help  to 
explain  how  Scotus,  as  well  as  the  Greek  Fathers, 
could  speak  of  the  change  of  body  into  soul.  They 
did  not  hold  the  grotesque  notion  that  really 
existing  bodies  might  be  transmuted  into  really 
existing  souls.  The  change  was  only  from  one! 
form  of  mind  into  another,  or  perhaps  from  the  - 
mode  in  which  things  had  been  regarded  into 
another  mode. 

The  ascription  of  all  reality  in  the  external  world 
to  mind  is  hardly  intelligible  unless  we  mean  to 
say  that,  for  us  at  least,  the  external  world  is 
resolved  into  modes  of  our  own  consciousness,  that 
is,  of  the  consciousness  of  each  individual  creature 
possessing  consciousness.  Scotus  seems  to  leave 
the  question  unanswered  whether  the  world  exists 
for  or  in  the  particular  or  the  universal  intelligence  ; 
whether,  that  is,  we  are  right  in  applying  to  the 
individual  mind  what  is  said  concerning  mind  in 
general.  Would  he  allow  a  plurality  of  universes, 
seeing  that  each  mind,  by  taking  cognizance  of 
things,  confers  on  these  things  somewhat  of  its  own 
reality?  He  would  probably  have  excluded  any 
such  conception  by  insisting,  as  he  so  often  does, 
on  the  essential  unity  of  all  mind,  and  the  unity 
of  that  human  nature  which,  as  we  have  already 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist        123 

seen,  he  regarded  as  a  notion  in  the  mind  of  God. 
The  pupil1  in  his  dialogue  finds  some  difficulty 
in  reconciling  the  latter  statement  with  the  assump- 
tion of  self-consciousness  as  the  essential  element 
in  human  nature,  and  that  difficulty  will  probably 
occur  to  modern  readers.  Without  attempting  to 
explain  it  away,  we  may  illustrate  it  by  comparing 
it  with  another  part  of  Scotus'  philosophy.  We 
have  already  cited  his  words  as  to  the  realization 
of  God  by  man:  'As  many  as  the  souls  of  the 
faithful,  so  many  are  the  theophanies  V  This 
principle  would  seem  not  only  to  make  all  religion 
subjective,  but  to  establish  a  kind  of  polytheism. 
Yet  we  know  that  his  belief  in  a  plurality  of  theo- 
phanies did  not  prevent  Scotus  from  being  a  mono- 
theist ;  and  similarly  the  manifold  appearances  of 
the  external  world  to  the  varieties  of  human  con- 
sciousness do  not  seem  to  contradict  the  supposition 
of  one  world  to  which  cohesion  and  harmony  are 
given  by  the  action  of  the  human  intellect.  His 
views  seem  to  be  in  the  main  derived  from  Diony- 
sius.  From  him  the  words  are  quoted  3 :  '  Cognitio 
eorum  quae  sunt  ea  quae  sunt  est.'  Perhaps  the 

1  DC  Div.  Nat.  iv.  7. 

a  May  I  be  allowed  to  cite  the  words  of  an  idealist  who  was  also 
a  preacher?  'Talk  of  God  to  a  thousand  ears,  each  has  his  own 
different  conception.  Each  man  in  this  congregation  has  a  God 
before  him  at  this  moment,  who  is,  according  to  his  own  attainment 
in  goodness,  more  or  less  limited  and  imperfect.'  F.  W.  Robertson, 
Sermons,  i.  117. 

3  De  Div.  Nat.  ii.  8. 


i24          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

old  idea  of  Protagoras  :  '  Man,  the  measure  of  all 
things,'  had  vaguely  floated  down  to  him,  and  be- 
come combined  with  the  conception  of  man  who 
has  been  made  in  the  image  of  God,  and  therefore 
is  endued  with  creative  intellectual  power. 

We  may  observe  here  that  it  is  the  notions  or 
conceptions  of  things,  not  things  themselves  exist- 
ing independently  of  mind,  that  make  up  the 
universe  which  the  human  mind  ordains  and  unites 
that  it  may  use  it  as  a  dwelling-place.  The  word 
notion  was  coming  to  have  its  modern  meaning1, 
and  the  way  was  being  paved  for  a  compromise 
between  the  Realists  and  Nominalists,  whose  con- 
troversies had  not  yet  begun.  But  to  this  point 
we  shall  have  to  return  later. 

However  much  obscurity,  then,  we  may  find  in 
the  ontology  of  Scotus,  a  few  points  stand  out 
clearly,  and  allow  us  to  call  him  a  subjective 
idealist — and  this  quite  independently  of  any 
theory  we  may  have  as  to  his  anticipation  of  the 
'  Ding  an  sich,'  or  of  the  distinction  between  '  Seyn 
und  Daseyn.'  Things  in  general  exist  only  as 
belonging  to  the  mind  which  cognizes  them,  and 
that  mind  supplies  to  them  the  attributes  by  which 
they  are  distinguished  from  one  another,  or  are 
made  to  fall  into  genera  and  species.  Time  and 
space  are  conditions  in  the  mind  of  the  thinker  or  • 
observer,  not  properties  of  the  things  conceived  or  ' 
observed.  The  power  of  the  mind  thus  to  order 

1  See  De  Dii:  Nat.  iv.  7  ;  p.  768  and  elsewhere. 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist        125 

its  universe  of  phenomena  is  due,  in  some  inex- 
plicable way,  to  its  having  its  own  existence  in 
what  it  may  call  (though  accurate  denomination 
is  impossible  here)  the  Highest  Intellect — to  its 
being  made  in  the  image  of  God.  This  implies  a 
threefold  existence  of  man— the  human  trinity— 
as  being,  power,  and  activity;  and  therein  his  self- 
consciousness  consists.  For  he  is  conscious  that 
he  has  being,  that  he  has  power  to  recognize  his 
being,  and  that  he  actually  does  recognize  it.  The 
world  to  which  he  gives  intellectual  unity  is  not 
formed  according  to  his  own  will,  but  by  the 
operation  of  the  primordial  causes  or  prototypes, 
which  are  to  be  thought  of  as  volition  and  reason 
at  the  same  time  ;  and  which,  being  of  divine  origin 
and  character,  communicate  life  and  being  to  all 
creation,  man  himself  included.  The  whole  creation 
is  a  revelation  of  God  to  those  minds  that  desire  to 
contemplate  Him  but  can  only  do  so  indirectly. 
'  But  these  things  may  be  thought  upon  more 
nobly  and  truly  than  they  can  be  expressed  in 
language,  and  more  nobly  and  truly  understood 
than  they  can  be  thought  upon,  for  more  noble 
and  more  true  are  they  in  reality  than  in  our 
understanding  V 

Bearing  in  mind  these  general  principles,  espe- 
cially the  close  connexion  of  thought  and  being, 
which  seems  generally  to  amount  to  a  complete 
identification,  let  us  attend  to  a  few  utterances  of 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  ii.  35. 


126          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Scotus  on  the  subject  of  knowledge,  and  of  the  way 
in  which  man  can  obtain  it. 

Since  the  intelligence  of  man  is *  man,  and  the/  !x^ 
things  which  he  knows  exist  in  his  intelligence] 
the  communication  of  knowledge  from  one  man  to 
another  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  absorption 
of  one  mind,  to  a  certain  limited  extent,  by  the 
other.  '  Whoever,  as  I  have  said,  entirely  [?  pure] 

understands,  becomes  that  which  he  understands 

We,  while  we  discuss  together,  alternately  become 
one  another.  For  if  I  understand  what  you  under- 
stand I  become  your  understanding,  and  in  a  certain 
unspeakable  way  I  am  made  into  you.  Similarly, 
when  you  entirely  understand  what  I  clearly  un- 
derstand you  become  my  understanding,  and  from 
two  understandings  there  arises  one,  by  reason  of 
that  which  we  both  sincerely  and  without  hesita- 
tion understand2.'  If  this  passage  were  taken  to 
prove  that  Scotus  had  no  clear  notion  of  the  pro- 
found isolation  of  every  human  being  regarded  as 
a  conscious  self,  it  would  save  us  from  the  trouble 
of  looking  for  any  marks  of  clear  and  deep  thought 
in  any  part  of  his  system.  But  the  stress  which 
he  always  lays  on  self-consciousness  would  lead 
us  to  think  that  in  this  place  he  was  not  confused, 
but  sensible  of  that  profoundest  of  all  enigmas, 

1  This  view  may  seem  inconsistent  with  the  stress  laid  by  Scotus 
on  the  Will  and  its  freedom.  Perhaps  the  power  of  volition  is  not 
ignored  but  rather  implied  in  that  of  understanding. 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iv.  9. 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist        127 

the  practically  realized  intercommunion  of  two 
beings,  each  of  which  is  a  cosmos  to  itself,  and 
knows  of  nothing  outside. 

Knowledge,  then,  is  a  kind  of  mental  assimila- 
tion, and  the  modes  by  which  knowledge  is  built 
up  are  the  same  as  those  by  which  the  universe 
is  created.  Analysis  and  resolution  are  logical 
processes,  yet  they  are  also  the  means  by  which 
the  several  parts  of  creation  are  brought  down 
from  the  Supreme  Unity  into  multiplicity,  and 
finally  restored  to  that  Unity  as  their  final  end. 
Dialectic  is  the  greatest  of  the  liberal  arts,  but  as 
it  deals  with  being,  genera,  and  species,  it  was 
founded  by  God  when  He  said:  'Let  the  earth 
bring  forth  the  living  creature  after  his  kind  V 
Definition  again,  while  it  shows  the  locus  (in  a  non- 
spacial  sense)  of  things  and  explains  what  they  are, 
is  also  taken  to  be  the  boundary  and  circumscrip- 
tion of  the  thing.  God  cannot  be  defined  because 
He  cannot  be  circumscribed.  The  higher  nature 
can  always  comprehend  the  lower ;  thus  the  capa- 
bility of  defining,  which  in  one  sense  is  an  art 
belonging  to  the  evepyeia  (  =  operatio)  of  the  soul? 
and  akin  to  dialectic,  may  from  another  point  of 
view  be  regarded  as  the  power  of  ascending  in  the 
spiritual  scale,  so  as  to  obtain  a  wider  and  ever 
wider  range  over  which  the  faculty  may  be 
exercised 2. 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iv.  4. 

8  A  large  part  of  Book  i  of  De  Div.  Nat.  is  devoted  to  locus. 


i28  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

Thinking  is,  of  course,  to  Scotus,  the  highest 
occupation  of  man,  unless  we  exclude  from  its 
sphere  the  contemplation  of  the  unthinkable.  What 
creation  is  to  God,  that  is  thought  to  man.  Scotus 
takes  as  lawful  and  necessary  means  to  the  attain- 
ment and  ordering  of  knowledge  all  that  tradition 
had  handed  down — the  seven  liberal  arts  and  the 
four  logical  methods — though,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
gave  to  some  of  these  a  peculiar  significance.  We 
have  already  dwelt  on  the  fact  that  he  did  not 
believe  in  the  possibility  of  coming,  by  the  use  of 
any  kind  of  argumentation,  to  definite  theological 
knowledge.  All  that  can  be  directly  stated  about 
the  Divinity  must  be  negative.  Yet  a  fruitful 
suggestion  is  made  that  while  we  cannot  say  how 
it  is  that  some  beings  aje  eternal  and  others  are 
made,  we  can  say  on  what  principle  we  may  call 
them  either  eternal  or  made l.  This  would  resolve 
the  science  of  theology  into  the  study  of  human 
thoughts  about  the  Divine,  and  would  probably 
include  the  determination  as  to  which  symbols 
might  be  used,  in  theological  language,  without  too 
much  violence  to  truth.  Free  as  is  his  use  of 
scriptural  and  patristic  statements,  he  is  not  here 
entirely  subjective,  but  would  interpret  according 
to  the  'fourfold  division  of  wisdom' — practical, 
physical,  theological,  and  logical2. 

The  connexion  between  the  logic  of  Scotus  and  that  of  Boethius  may 
be  studied  in  Prantl,  vol.  ii. 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iii.  16,  p.  670.  2  Ibid.,  29. 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist        129 

Yet  beyond  all  knowledge,  properly  so-called,  is 
the  realm  of  faith,  and  here,  as  in  the  case  of  more 
strictly  cognizable  things,  the  object  of  contem- 
plation must  actually  come  within  the  human 
rnind,  and  be  assimilated,  before  its  being  can  be 
realized  \  '  God  is  also  said  to  come  into  being  in 
the  souls  of  the  faithful,  since  either  by  faith  and 
virtue  He  is  conceived  in  them,  or  in  a  certain 
fashion,  by  faith,  begins  to  be  understood.  For,  in 
my  judgement,  faith  is  nothing  else  than  a  certain 
principle  from  which  the  recognition  of  the  Creator 
arises  in  a  reasonable  nature.'  We  seem  to  have 
here  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  presented 
from  an  entirely  subjective  and  individual  stand- 
point 2. 

We  have  endeavoured  to  focus  together  sundry 
passages  from  the  works  of  Scotus — many  of  which 
we  had  already  cited — so  that  they  might  throw 
some  light  on  his  views  as  to  the  great  mysteries 
of  existence,  thought,  and  knowledge.  The  result 
has  not  been  a  quite  coherent  picture,  but  possibly 
those  who  think  it  worth  while  to  familiarize  them- 
selves with  the  thoughts  that  teemed  in  the  mind 
of  this  earnest  thinker  will  gradually  find  more 
and  more  links  by  which  the  various  parts  of  his 
cosmology  and  theology  are  bound  together.  If, 
after  much  study,  they  still  find  him  obscure,  they 
would  do  well  to  see  whether  the  darkness  is  due — 
if  we  may  use  a  favourite  expression  of  Dionysius 
1  De  Div.  Nat.  i.  71.  "  See  above,  p.  83. 

K 


130          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

and  of  Scotus  himself — to  absence  or  to  excess  of 
light.  In  either  case  they  must  acknowledge  that, 
whether  self-consistent  or  not,  he  is  always  abun- 
dantly suggestive. 

But  whether  we  of  the  nineteenth  century  are 
capable  or  not  of  comprehending  his  philosophic 
attitude,  it  certainly  was  puzzling  to  the  men  of 
the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries.  The  further 
posthumous  charges  of  heresy  and  the  successive 
condemnations  which  went  far  towards  depriving 
us  of  his  writings  altogether  will  be  considered  in 
our  concluding  chapter.  Here  it  seems  desirable 
to  say  a  few  words  as  to  the  bearing  of  his  works 
on  the  question  of  Universals,  which  began  to  be 
agitated  some  time  after  his  death. 

Now  here  we  are  met  with  an  unexpected  fact. 
In  a  chronicle  of  the  early  tenth  century,  certain 
well-known  teachers — Robert  of  Paris,  Roscelin  of 
Compiegne,  and  Arnulf  of  Laon — are  mentioned  as 
having  taught  that  the  art  of  dialectic  had  to  do 
with  words,  and  that  in  that  respect  they  were  fol- 
lowers of  John,  who  '  eandein  artem  philosophicam 
vocalem  esse  disseruit  V  Now  of  course  we  can- 
not be  secure  in  identifying  this  John  with  our 
Scotus,  and  at  first  sight  it  would  seem  quite  absurd 
to  do  so,  since  many  of  the  passages  we  have  quoted 
prove  him  to  have  been  a  realist  of  realists.  We 
have  seen  that  he  regarded  dialectic  as  a  divine  art, 

1  On  the  questions  raised  by  this  passage,  see  Poole,  App.  II,  and 
cf.  Prantl  and  Haure"au. 


Scotus  as  Subjective  Idealist       131 

concerned  with  ovo-ta,  and  if  he  varies  the  descrip- 
tion of  it  so  as  to  define  it  in  another  place  as  * 
'  The  study  which  investigates  the  common  rational 
conceptions  of  the  mind,'  we  have  here  no  nomin- 
alism, but  a  form  of  conceptualism.  Nevertheless, 
Scotus  lays  so  much  stress  on  the  importance  and 
significance  of  names,  that  some  historians — notably 
Prantl — are  inclined  to  range  him  among  the  earliest 
of  the  Nominalists.  Thus  he  speaks  of  grammar 
and  logic  as  being  subordinate  parts  of  dialectic, 
and  yet  as  being  concerned  with  words  and  expres- 
sions rather  than  with  realities2.  Again,  in  alle- 
gorizing the  story  of  Adam  giving  names  to  all  the 
beasts  of  the  field  3,  he  says  :  '  If  he  did  not  under- 
stand them,  how  could  he  rightly  name  them?  For 
what  he  called  everything,  that  was  its  name  ;  that 
is  to  say,  such  is  the  notion  of  the  living  soul  4. 
He  goes  on  to  say  that  the  notion  of  things  in  the 
human  mind  is  to  be  taken  as  the  substance  of 
those  things,  and  that  similarly  the  notion  of  the 
universe  in  the  mind  of  God  is  to  be  regarded  as 
the  substance  of  the  universe.  Here,  however,  he 
seems  to  have  broken  loose  from  names  altogether, 
except  in  so  far  as  they  are  a  necessary  part  of 
notions.  And  elsewhere  he  says,5  '  Whatsoever 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  i.  27.  2  Ibid. 

3  Ibid.  iv.  7. 

*  In  the  Vulgate  the  reading  of  Gen.  ii.  19  is  '  omne  enim 
(autem  apud  Scotuni)  quod  vocavit  Adam  animae  vicentis  ipsum  est 
nomen  eius.' 

5  De  Div.  Nat.  i.  14. 

K  2, 


i32          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

we  recognize  in  names,  we  must  needs  recognize  in 
the  things  signified  by  names.' 

It  will  probably  be  agreed  that  if  the  various 
doctrines  as  to  Universals,  and  the  long  controversy 
between  Realists  and  Nominalists  form  the  chief 
element  in  the  Scholastic  Philosophy,  Scotus  is  not 
to  be  regarded  as  the  first  of  the  Schoolmen.  He 
is  free  from  the  imputation  of  multiplying  meta- 
physical abstractions  as  well  as  from  that  of  attach- 
ing undue  significance  to  names.  As  in  the  other 
disputes  with  which  we  have  seen  his  name  mixed 
up,  he  has  his  home  in  neither  party.  His  '  soul  , 
was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart' ;  and  because  he 
stands  apart  from  his  contemporaries  and  immediate 
followers,  he  seems  to  find  his  natural  place  among 
the  free  and  lofty  thinkers  of  all  times. 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE    INFLUENCE   OF   SCOTUS.      CONCLUSION 

'  A  contemplative  life  is  raised  above  all  that  is  temporal  and 
only  an  enjoyment  of  eternal  things  ;  whoever,  therefore,  wishes  to 
lead  such  a  life  must  needs  leave  all  that  is  temporal.' — TAULEU. 

THE  influence  of  a  mediaeval  mystic  on  his  con- 
temporaries and  successors  is  liable  to  be  both  over- 
rated and  underrated  by  critics  of  later  times.  For 
on  the  one  hand,  as  we  have  already  had  occasion 
to  suggest,  the  chief  ideas  of  the  mystic  are  gener- 
ally developed  within  his  individual  consciousness, 
or,  as  he  might  prefer  to  say,  revealed  to  his  own 
soul,  not  learned  from  an  instructor,  though  any 
suggestions  made  by  those  who  are  going  through 
a  similar  process  of  enlightenment  fall  into  his 
mind  as  into  a  congenial  soil  wherein  to  grow  and 
fructify.  Still,  when  we  find  mystics  all  over  the 
world  and  all  through  the  centuries  expressing 
their  ideas  in  similar  language,  we  learn  to  be 
cautious  in  saying  that  this  man  derived  his  prin- 


134          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

: 

ciples  from  that  source,  unless,  of  course,  he  tells 
us  so  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  we  in  these  days 
of  many  books  are  apt  to  underrate  the  personal 
influence  of  masters  and  teachers  in  the  early  days 
of  Western  European  culture.  Rabanus,  Ratramnus, 
and  other  learned  men  whose  names  have  become 
familiar  to  us  in  connexion  with  the  fortunes  of 
Scotus,  were  prolific  writers.  Yet  probably  the 
power  they  wielded  from  the  teacher's  desk  was 
greater  than  that  exercised  in  solitary  writing. 
The  dialogues  of  Alcuin  with  the  young  Carolingian 
princes  may  roughly  indicate  the  kind  of  stimulus 
imparted  by  oral  teaching.  The  '  Discipulus '  of 
De  Divisions  Naturae  is  not  the  sort  of  youth 
that  can  have  been  common  in  those  days,  and  is 
even  more  advanced  in  learning  than  '  Macaulay's 
schoolboy.'  The  choice  of  the  dialogue  form  to  set 
forth  his  profoundest  doctrines  may  be  merely  due 
to  acquiescence  on  the  part  of  Scotus  in  the  notions 
of  his  time.  Yet  his  contemporaries  may  not  have 
been  wrong  in  regarding  actual  conversation  with 
pupils  as  the  natural  means  for  communicating  in- 
struction. 

And  again,  such  communication  of  instruction  by 
no  means  exhausts  the  influence  of  a  thinker  like 
Scotus.  Those  who  came  under  his  teaching,  even 
if  none  of  them  may  have  been  as  clever  as 
'  Discipulus/  must  have  acquired  something  of  his 
method  of  arguing,  his  ways  of  using  scriptural  and 
patristic  quotations,  and  his  general  tone  of  mind. 


The  Influence  of  Scotus  135 

"We  do  not  know  how  long  ho  remained  at  the  head 
of  the  School  of  Paris,  but  the  anxiety  of  his 
opponents  to  displace  him,  and  the  demand  of  the 
Pope  for  his  expulsion  testify  to  the  importance  of 
his  direct  and  indirect  influence. 

Thus  while  we  may  doubt  whether  Scotus  ever  be- 
came the  founder  of  any  set  of  thinkers,  and  refrain 
from  attributing  to  a  knowledge  of  his  writiDgs  those 
mystic  utterances  of  thoughtful  and  unconventional 
minds,  whether  orthodox  or  heterodox,  which,  in  the 
following  centuries,  frequently  recall  his  principles 
and  doctrines,  we  may  well  admit  that  a  certain 
underground  influence  worked  on  without  recogni- 
tion of  its  provenance  till  it  found  its  purest  ex- 
pression in  the  religious  life  of  the  Freunde  Gotten 
and  its  authoritative  exposition  in  the  writings  of 
Eckhart  and  Tauler.  The  thought  of  God  as  the  one 
reality,  of  Evil  as  mere  negation  of  Good,  of  Sin  as 
Selfishness,  and  of  Selfishness  as  the  one  distracting 
influence  that  keeps  man  from  realizing  his  great 
capacities,  of  the  individual  and  personal  signifi- 
cance of  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation — these 
ideas  are  translated  from  philosophical  into  popular 
and  practical  form  in  the  works  of  the  Dominican 
Tauler  and  in  the  anonymous  Theologia  Germanica. 
The  writings  of  Scotus,  except,  perhaps,  some  of  his 
translations  of  Dionysius,  were,  for  reasons  which 
we  shall  see  directly,  unknown  to  the  men  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  Yet  Scotus  had  helped  to  keep 
the  eyes  of  the  more  spiritually-minded  fixed  on 


136          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

great  realities  and  indifferent  to  mechanical  obser- 
vance. If  but  very  indirectly,  still  in  some  measure 
Scotus  may  thus  have  contributed  to  form  the  re- 
ligious ideas  of  many  German  Lutherans,  with 
whom  the  Tkeologia  Germanica l  and  the  works  of 
Tauler  have  always  been  favourite  books  of  religious 
reading.  But  we  must  return  towards  the  days 
less  remote  from  his  lifetime,  and  to  what  we  can 
safely  regard  as  the  direct  fruits  of  his  teaching. 

During  the  later  part  of  the  twelfth  and  the 
earlier  of  the  thirteenth  century,  two  independent 
teachers  arose  whose  doctrines  were  opposed  as 
heretical  and  publicly  condemned.  These  were 
Amalric  of  Bene,  near  Chartres,  and  David  of 
Dinant.  We  know  something  of  what  they  taught 
chiefly  from  those  who  in  the  next,  or  a  later  genera- 
tion, narrated  their  condemnation  or  combated  their 
views 2.  Amalric  had  taught  in  Paris,  incurred 
suspicion  among  his  colleagues,  lost  his  chair,  and 
after  a  vain  appeal  to  Pope  Innocent  III  made  his 
submission  to  the  Church.  It  was  not  till  1209, 
three  or  four  years  after  his  death,  that  his  doctrines 
were  formally  condemned  in  a  synod  at  Paris.  Of 
them  Henry  of  Ostia  writes :  *  The  dogma  of  the 

1  The  Theoloffia  Germanica  and  some  of  Tauler's  sermons  have 
been  very  well  rendered  into  English  by  Miss  Susanna  Winkworth. 

a  A  very  good  account  of  these  two  men,  with  full  citations  from 
authorities  is  given  by  Huber,  p.  434  et  seq.  Of  Amalric  we  know 
chiefly  from  Cardinal  Henry  of  Ostia  and  Martinus  Polonus  ;  also 
from  Gerson  :  of  David  of  Dinant  from  the  controversial  writings 
of  Albertus  Magnus. 


The  Influence  of  Scotus  137 

wicked  Amalric  is  comprised  in  the  book  of  the 
Master  John  the  Scot  which  is  called  periphysion 
(i.  e.  De  Natura),  which  the  said  Amalric  followed  ; 
.  .  .  and  the  said  John  in  the  same  book  cited  the 
authority  of  a  Greek  Master  named  Maximus.  In 
which  book  many  heresies  were  contained,  ...  of 
which  three  may  suffice  as  examples.  First  and 
chief,  that  all  things  are  God.  .  .  .  The  second  is 
that  the  primordial  causes  which  are  called  ulea# 
create  and  are  created.  .  .  .  The  third  is  that  in 
the  consummation  of  the  ages  there  will  be  a  union 
of  the  sexes,  or  there  will  be  no  distinction 
of  sex,  which  union  he  says  to  have  begun  in 
Christ.' 

A  closely  similar  account  of  the  doctrine  as  con- 
demned by  Pope  Innocent  III  is  given  by  Martinus 
Polonus,  who  lived  about  a  hundred  years  later, 
and  affords  a  monument  of  bad  Latin  and  of  pre- 
sumptuous stupidity.  '  We  condemn  that  Amalric 
has  declared  that  the  ydeas  [sic]  which  are  in  the 
Divine  Mind  create  and  are  created,  whereas  accord- 
ing to  St.  Augustine  nothing  that  is  not  eternal  and 
immutable  is  in  the  Divine  Mind.  He  has  declared 
also  that  God  is  called  the  end  of  all  things.  .  .  . 
That  God  is  the  essence  of  all  creatures  and  the 
being  of  all.  He  has  said  also  that  to  those  in 
charity  no  sin  is  imputed.  Under  which  strength 
of  piety  [or  appearance?  ope  for  specie  1]  his  fol- 
lowers freely  commit  all  manner  of  iniquities.  He 
says  that  if  man  had  not  sinned  he  would  not  have 


138          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

fallen  into  duplicity  of  sex,  ...  all  which  errors 
are  found  in  the  book  which  is  called  periphysion.' 
Martinus  also  quotes  as  among  the  heresies  of 
Amalric  what  looks  like  a  travesty  of  some  remarks 
about  human  and  divine  parenthood  in  Scotus  *. 
A  far  greater  man,  John  Gerson.  of  Paris,  refers  to 
Amalric  and  his  errors,  and  knows,  as  Polonus 
seems  not  to  know,  that  the  book  Trepi  <£uo-eW  was 
that  of  Scotus. 

The  charge  of  antinomianism  brought  against 
Amalric,  and  indirectly  against  Scotus,  seems  singu- 
larly inappropriate,  since  that  strange  doctrine  was 
with  more  reason  regarded  as  a  natural  consequence 
of  extreme  necessitarianism,  and  of  the  tone  of  mind 
found  in  Gottschalk  and  denounced  perhaps  even 
too  vigorously  by  Scotus. 

David  of  Dinant,  who  is  not  known  to  have  been 
a  pupil  of  Amalric,  taught,  what  he  could  hardly 
have  derived  from  Scotus,  a  system  of  materialistic 
pantheism.  He  was  condemned  in  good  company, 
as  along  with  his  works  were  prohibited  some  of 
the  recently  introduced  treatises  of  Aristotle. 

This  led  to  a  more  formal  censure  passed  by 
papal  authority  on  the  works  of  Scotus.  We  have 
seen  that  long  before,  Hincmar  had  tried  to  bring 
him  into  ill  favour  at  Home.  We  have  also  referred 
to  the  letter  of  Nicolas  I  to  Charles  the  Bald, 
written  after  John  had  completed  his  translation  of 
Dionysius.  The  king  is  requested  to  send  John  to 
1  DeDiv.  Nat.  i.  16. 


The  Influence  of  Scotus  139 

Rome 1,  or  at  least  away  from  Paris,  lest  he  should 
mix  tares  with  the  wheat,  and  give  the  people 
poison  for  bread,  a  mixture  of  metaphors  probably 
due  to  imperfect  knowledge  of  agriculture. 

But  it  was  not  till  1225,  soon  after  the  affair  of 
Amalric  and  David,  that  the  final  condemnation 
came,  by  a  bull  of  Honorius  III.  It  begins  with 
the  same  complaint  as  that  of  Nicolas,  that  an 
enemy  had  been  sowing  tares  among  the  wheat. 
The  pope  had  heard  from  the  Archbishop  of  Paris 
that  a  book  called  Periphysis  had  been  justly  con- 
demned in  a  provincial  council,  as  teeming  with  the 
worms  of  an  abominable  heresy.  '  And  since,'  the 
pope  goes  on  to  say,  '  the  book,  as  we  have  heard, 
is  to  be  found  in  various  monasteries,  and  other ' 
places,  and  several  monastic  and  scholastic  persons, 
being  unduly  attracted  by  novelty,  give  themselves 
eagerly  to  the  study  of  the  said  book,  thinking  it 
a  fine  thing  to  utter  strange  opinions — though  the 
Apostle  warns  us  to  avoid  profane  novelties— we, 
in  accordance  with  our  pastoral  duty,  endeavouring 
to  oppose  the  power  of  corruption  which  a  book  of 
this  kind  might  exercise,  command  you  all  and 
several,  straightly  enjoining  you  in  the  Holy  Ghost, 
that  you  make  diligent  search  for  that  book,  and 
wheresoever  you  shall  have  succeeded  in  finding 
the  same,  or  any  portion  thereof,  that  you  send  it,  if 
it  may  be  done  with  safety,  without  delay  to  us,  to 

1  According  to  another  copy  of  the  letter,  only  the  book  is  to  be 
sent  to  Rome,  and  there  ia  no  mention  of  Paris.     Floss,  p.  1026. 


140          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

be  solemnly  burned  ;  or  if  this  is  impossible,  that 
you  do  yourselves  publicly  burn  the  same,  and 
that  you  strictly  exhort  all  who  serve  under  you, 
that  whosoever  of  them  has  or  is  able  to  have  in 
whole  or  in  part  any  copies  of  the  said  book,  and 
shall  delay  in  giving  them  up  to  us,  shall,  in  case 
they  have  knowingly  presumed  to  retain  all  or  part 
of  the  said  book  for  fifteen  days  after  this  order 
and  denunciation  shall  have  come  to  their  know- 
ledge, have  thereby  incurred  the  sentence  of  excom- 
munication, nor  shall  they  escape  the  charge  of  the 
abomination  of  heresy.  Given  at  the  Lateran,  23 
February,  1225.' 

'  As  lief  kill  a  man  as  kill  a  good  book.'  Yet 
after  all  a  good  book  has  more  chances  of  resusci- 
tation. De  Divisione  Naturae  fell  into  oblivion  so 
deep  that  it  did  not  seem  worth  the  trouble  to  put 
it  on  the  Index  drawn  up  at  the  Council  of  Trent. 
It  was  discovered  later,  and  printed  by  an  Oxonian, 
Thomas  Gale,  in  1681.  But  this  led  to  its  being 
definitely  placed  on  the  Index  of  prohibited  books 
by  Innocent  XI,  in  1685. 

It  may  seem  strange  that  a  work  thus  condemned 
should  find  its  place  in  the  great  patrological  series 
edited  by  Migne.  It  is,  however,  not  given  without 
a  warning.  In  a  short  preface  by  Floss,  we  are 
warned  of  the  curiously  double  character  of  the 
book — how  it  is  profitable  in  some  parts,  hopelessly 
erroneous  in  others — and  the  bull  of  Honorius  III 
is  printed  in  extenso. 


If  the  dread  of  John's  doctrines  felt  by  the 
divines  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  even  by  the 
Catholics  of  the  Counter-Reformation  seems  to  us 
unreasonable,  and  perhaps  a  little  superstitious, 
we  should  recollect,  and  reckon  as  a  partial  excuse 
for  this  intolerance,  what  we  have  lately  pointed 
out :  that  the  influence  of  a  writer  like  Scotus 
generally  works  underground,  not  by  introducing 
new  doctrine,  but  by  forming  a  new  tone  of  mind. 
The  objections  to  his  actual  statements  look  puerile 
on  paper,  and  are  often  based  on  gross  mis- 
understandings, but  the  fact  remains  that  the 
whole  spirit  which  animated  Scotus  was  out  of 
harmony  with  that  which  prevailed  in  the  Roman 
Church,  and  would  not  have  tended  to  foster  a 
tone  of  submissive  acquiescence  to  constituted 
authorities,  whether  in  matters  of  ritual,  faith,  or 
speculation. 

In  his  theology  and  in  his  ethics  Scotus,  as  we 
have  seen,  stands  apart  from  most  of  the  question- 
ings which  began  even  before  his  day,  and  have 
gone  on  into  our  own.  We  have  seen  how  far  re- 
moved from  his  system,  for  example,  is  any  attempt 
to  prove  the  existence  of  a  God.  The  ontological 
proof  of  Anselm — that  a  conception  of  the  Perfect 
would  be  incomplete  unless  there  existed  the  reality 
of  which  it  is  a  conception — might  possibly  have 
been  allowed  by  him,  but  all  modern  logicians  re- 
gard it  as  no  proof  at  all.  Theologians  have  only 
succeeded  in  composing  some  kind  of  argument  for 


i4a          Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

the  being  of  God  by  first  exiling  Him  from  the 
world  and  from  humanity. 

By  Scotus,  God  is  neither  proved  by  argument 
nor  accepted  as  a  hypothesis,  but  recognized  as 
necessary  to  the  being  of  anything  whatsoever.  It 
is  the  same  with  the  Self,  recognized  in  its  acts, 
judgements,  and  volitions,  not  proved  by  means  of 
them.  It  may  seem,  perhaps,  rather  to  overstrain 
his  words,  though  it  would,  I  consider,  be  a  legiti- 
mate development  of  his  principles,  to  say  that  Self 
is  cognized  in  every  act  of  thought,  and  God  is  cog- 
nized in  every  act  of  worship.  This  is  not,  per- 
haps, a  firm  basis  on  which  to  build  a  Summa 
Theologiae.  The  term  attributes  as  applied  to  God 
is  to  Scotus  pure  nonsense.  But  we  are,  he  would 
think,  on  safer  ground  when  we  discuss  the  appro- 
priateness of  marking  such-and-such  attributes  as 
implied  in  our  conception  of  Him.  In  so  doing  we 
are  only  discussing  the  structure  and  character  of 
our  own  mind,  which  must  needs  impose  certain 
characteristics  or  names  on  all  that  it  in  any  sense 
conceives  or  believes  in. 

The  essentially  subjective  character  of  John's 
religion  has  already  been  dwelt  upon,  and  we  have 
seen  that  it  was  inconsistent  with  the  dogmatic 
and  the  sacramental  system  of  the  mediaeval 
Church.  But  while  we  recognize  an  inward 
sympathy  among  the  devout  souls  of  all  ages  that 
find  the  ultimate  resort  of  truth  in  the  depths  of 
personal  consciousness,  we  must  not  overlook  one 


The  Influence  of  Scotus  143 

great  difference  between  the  religion  of  Scotus  and 
that  of  the  most  spiritual  teachers  of  the  present 
day :  with  him  the  historical  element  in  religion 
was  reduced  to  a  minimum.  It  seems  hardly  too 
much  to  say  that  the  historical  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
scarcely  existed  for  thousands  of  mediaeval  Chris- 
tians. Christ  was  the  Second  Person  of  the  Trinity, 
enthroned  on  high  ;  or  the  Bread  which  had  been 
changed  in  substance  in  the  hands  of  the  Priest ; 
or — especially  to  Scotus — the  inspiring  and  creative 
Word,  which  brought  order  out  of  chaos  in  each 
Christian  soul.  Religious  minds  have  not  found  these 
three  conceptions  mutually  exclusive,  nor  does  any 
one  of  them  prevent  the  recognition  of  one  Man  as 
having,  at  one  moment  in  history,  appeared  in  the 
world  and  begun  a  new  religious  era.  It  would  be 
as  idle  to  blame  Scotus  for  wanting  a  philosophic 
conception  of  historical  Christianity  as  it  would  be 
to  complain  of  his  not  discerning  the  principle  of 
evolution  in  the  physical  world l.  But  it  is  con- 
ducive to  general  clearness  of  thought  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  the  mystic  point  of  view  needs  to  be 
accommodated  to  the  historical  at  least  as  much  as 
to  the  dogmatic. 

In  ethics,  no  less  than  in  theology,  Scotus  stands 
apart  from  most  philosophers,  and  may  seem  to 

1  We  might  illustrate  these  remarks  by  aaking,  What  was  the 
mediaeval  conception  of  Alexander  or  of  '  il  buono  Augusto '  ?  They 
were  vivid  enough,  but  essentially  unhistorical.  The  absence  of 
a  real  historic  sense  in  the  mediaeval  mind  is  shown  in  most  of  the 
early  attempts  to  condense  universal  history. 


144  Studies  in  John  the  Scot 

modern  thinkers  to  be  deficient.  He  nowhere 
inquires  after  a  criterion  to  distinguish  right  action 
from  wrong.  He  certainly  would  not  regard  any 
consequences  of  actions  as  affording  such  a  criterion. 
And  he  has  not  much  to  say  about  a  supreme  - 
moral  law.  His  morality  is  one  of  ideals  rather  j 
than  of  laws.  He  recognizes  an  art  of  practical 
wisdom,  by  which  vices  may  be  eradicated  and 
supplanted  by  virtues  l.  He  follows  Maximus  in 
saying  that  the  contemplation  of  virtue  actually 
turns  the  soul  into  that  which  it  contemplates2. 
And,  as  we  have  seen,  he  regards  the  growth  of 
virtues  as  the  incarnation  of  the  divine  word 
within  the  soul 3.  In  so  far  as  he  has  a  theory,  it 
seems  to  be  that  virtues  increase  in  the  soul  through 
perpetual  attention  to  that  which  is  recognized  as 
good  and  neglect  of  what  is  superficially  attractive. 
This  theory,  of  course,  implies  the  superiority  of 
the  contemplative  life  over  every  other. 

And  it  is  as  a  man  of  contemplation,  not  a 
dreamer,  but  a  thinker,  that  John  the  Scot  most 
chiefly  commands  our  respect  and  attracts  our 
sympathy.  We  are,  perhaps,  ready  to  acknow- 
ledge the  merits  of  the  contemplative  character 
when  we  can  see  that  by  the  influence  of  man  on 
man  contemplation  often  results  in  action.  But 
we  do  not  always  fully  realize  that  the  man  who 
thinks,  and  does  nothing  but  think,  is  a  benefactor 
to  his  race,  in  that  he  is  a  standing  witness  to  the 

1  De  Div.  Nat.  iii.  29.  a  Ibid.  i.  9.  3  Ibid.  iii.  9.    , 


The  Influence  of  Scotus  145 

superiority  of  the  spiritual  over  the  material.  John, 
of  course,  not  only  thought,  but  wrote.  Yet  if  he 
had  never  written  a  line  his  work  might  have  been 
as  profitable  as  that  of  Hincmar,  with  all  that 
great  prelate's  efforts  to  reorganize  anarchic 
societies  and  bring  the  moral  law  to  bear  in  high 
places.  Little  as  we  know  about  Scotus,  we  can 
frame  a  picture  of  him  which  it  is  well  to  look  at 
from  time  to  time.  He  possessed  the  energy  of 
mind  to  think  out  a  spiritual  theory  of  the  universe 
in  a  grossly  materialistic  age ;  earnest  in  his 
pursuit  of  truth,  he  made  no  impatient  efforts  to 
force  the  human  reason  to  tasks  that  were  beyond 
its  capacity ;  fearless  and  sceptical  in  his  inquiries 
(though  cautious  at  times  in  announcing  their 
results),  yet  capable  of  ardent  belief  in  a  spiritual 
world  that  lay  beyond  all  possible  investigation, 
he  stands  before  us  a  devout  agnostic,  an  eclectic 
philosopher,  a  recipient  of  the  influences  of  the 
past,  who  in  many  ways  anticipated  the  most 
fruitful  ideas  of  the  present  age.  The  world  has 
wondered  at  him,  condemned  him.  forgotten  him. 
Yet  possibly  the  world  is  better  for  the  fact  that 
he  and  a  few  men  of  his  stamp  have  lived  and 
thought  apart  from  the  main  stream  of  human 
progress.  For  these  isolated  thinkers  have  helped 
by  the  travail  of  their  souls,  and  by  the  sacrifice 
of  all  lesser  joys,  to  keep  before  men's  minds  these 
eternal  ideas,  in  the  light  of  which  alone  any  real 
progress  can  be  achieved. 

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